Vurt Ninjas
by rayemars
Summary: In a world where virtual reality comes prepackaged in feathers, and where knowledge can literally kill, Naruto introduces a new game to Sasuke and Sakura: one called 'Konoha.' [Fusion with Jeff Noon's Vurt.]
1. game 1

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. Vurt belongs to Jeff Noon.

I've been informed multiple times that those people who don't know about the Vurt universe are going to be **really really** confused (obviously I scored a record on writing one of the obscurest fusions ever). So, um, the only really important things to know is that this world has virtual reality games that are played by basically sucking on feathers--blue for legal fun, pink for porn, black for violence, yellow for knowledge, and silver for making other feathers; and only the yellows can kill you--and that Sasuke is an extremely weird product of genetic quirkery.

Vurt Ninjas 1: In which the idea came to me while washing dishes last summer, and made so little sense that it made perfect sense. You know?  
——————

-

_With all due apologies to Jeff Noon._

-

Sakura was about a foot from the door when she could hear the yelling. She rolled her eyes and unlocked it with slightly more stealth.

Said stealth was useless, because Naruto heard it anyway and had grabbed her arm by the time she'd pulled the key free.

"Sakuraaaaaa! Sasuke's being a pansyass again!"

"Don't drag her into this because you're not getting your way," Sasuke said tonelessly from where he was sitting at the table, finishing what was lunch for him.

She tugged her arm free and pushed Naruto away long enough to shrug out of her coat. "Now what?"

Sasuke answered before Naruto could. "He wants to try a new feather."

Sakura brightened. "Pink?" she asked Naruto. He shook his head, and she gave him a brief pout before returning to normal.

"Black," Naruto replied. He trailed behind her as she headed to the kitchen to throw together what would be a late dinner for her. "With a little yellow."

Sakura glanced at him over her shoulder. "What?"

"Just a little!" Naruto said defensively. "You can barely see it on the fringe."

Sasuke swallowed a bite of his sandwich and brushed the crumbs away from his mouth. "I don't do yellows. I like my mind functional and sane."

"Ffff, wuss. Just because it's not one of those sorry blue Soapvurts--"

"Those are Sakura's," Sasuke interrupted.

Naruto gave a disbelieving snort. Sakura, pulling the bag of grapes out of the minifridge, rolled her eyes again but didn't contradict him.

"Come _on_," Naruto said, looking to Sakura for support. "Do you know what a pain in the ass it was for me to get this one? It's barely yellow, I swear. And it's supposed to be really cool."

Sakura raised an eyebrow as she started washing a stem of grapes. "Which one is it? Major Tom? Tea Party?"

"It's called Konoha."

She frowned. "I've never heard of that one."

"Yeah," Naruto said, leaning against the table next to Sasuke. "It's new."

"New?" Sakura repeated dubiously.

"It's been tested, geez," he replied to her tone. "I'm not an idiot." He pulled the packet up from the table and held it out to her. "Look, look, it's barely yellow."

Sasuke snorted under his breath and finished off his sandwich. "I'm going to work," he stated, shoving his chair under the table and dropping the plate in the sink. Sakura pushed it under the water to disseminate the faint shadows clinging to it.

"Pansyass!" Naruto called again. Sasuke casually shrugged on his jacket, casually flipped him off, and casually slammed the door behind him.

Sakura turned off the faucet and examined the feather critically. Naruto was right--the yellow was barely visible at the edges except when it was held up to the light.

"Well . . ." she said, holding it out to him, "I'll try it with you. But only if Sasuke's around, just in case."

Naruto slid it back into the packet, even as he shook his head vehemently. "No, it's gotta be all three of us!"

She raised an eyebrow again. "But **why**?"

He grinned. "Just trust me?" When she raised the second eyebrow, he kept grinning, but it turned serious. "Come on, I got it from the old pervert bastard's supplier. You know he wouldn't let the guy sell me anything that was bad."

Sakura gave the feather another dubious look. "Yeah . . . but if you can't talk him into it, you know I'm not gonna be able to."

Naruto sat on the table. "If we can make him curious enough. . . ."

Sakura glanced heavenward before turning back to the sink. "If you want to do that, you might have to actually give us some _information_ on it."

Naruto scratched his arm, flicking the corpse of a flea out of the light fur a moment later. "It's about ninjas."

Sakura popped one of the grapes into her mouth, picked up the rest of the bunch, and then turned around and gave him the most disbelieving look she had.

"What?" Naruto asked.  
-

Naruto's incredibly undetailed plan of Wear The Bastard Down Until He Agrees took three days, or roughly the amount of time Sakura deemed necessary to pass before pointing out to Sasuke that both their psyches were going to be suffering more damage from any further contact with Naruto than from anything the Vurt could throw at them. Sasuke finally agreed because the only other viable option was to work more hours at the club, and he disliked people too much for that one.

But he still gave Naruto an irritated look while the blond was smearing Vaz on the feather. "If this is enough of a yellow that we can't jerk out, I'm going to kill you."

"So long 's I get to molest you while you're all feathered up and submissive first," Naruto mumbled absently, carefully greasing the tip of the feather from his seat on the floor.

Sasuke tensed, and Sakura had lived with the two of them long enough to know when he was about to attack. She used the leverage she had from sitting on the couch behind him and hooked a leg over his shoulder before he could tackle Naruto, and then held her hand out.

"That's good enough. Come on, I wanna try it _some_time tonight!"

Sasuke muttered "Traitor" under his breath, and Sakura dug her heel into his ribs. Naruto snickered and handed the feather over.

She slipped it into her mouth, making sure that it touched the back of her throat, before quickly pulling it out and handing it down to Sasuke. She heard him coughing faintly (he never seemed to get used to feathering, despite his fondness for blacks), and Naruto saying something, before the opening to the game began.

_Jesus Christ_, Sakura thought to herself a few moments later, before the Vurt had completely plunged her into her character. _These trees are **huge**_.


	2. game 2

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. Vurt belongs to Jeff Noon.

Vurt Ninjas 2: In which Sasuke is a sadist, Sakura is a drug dealer, and yet no one ever questions Naruto about his taste in lovers.  
——————

-

A few moments after Naruto strolled into the booth, Sasuke ripped the bass cord out of the nebulo. It collapsed to the floor, twitching slightly.

Naruto draped himself over the limbic splitter deck that Sasuke was working with. "Sadist," he said, watching as two more nebuli dragged their friend out of the booth.

"People bribe me for this," Sasuke replied, shoving Naruto's arms away from the switches. The blond folded them under his chin and continued to lean on the deck.

"You're still a sadist," he said. "You always crank the bass too high."

Sasuke didn't reply, so Naruto propped his chin in a hand. "I got another Konoha," he said with a grin.

The grin widened when Sasuke's gaze flicked to him briefly before turning back to the deck. "Where's Sakura?"

Naruto pointed a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the club proper outside of the windows of the booth. "She just finished a deal on the balcony, so she's probably buried somewhere in the crush. I'll find her."

Sasuke gave the windows a glare. "She's doing that **here**?"

"One of the best areas for customers," Naruto said with a shrug, nearly hitting one of the switches. He shifted enough to lean on another deck when Sasuke punched at his wrist.

"Tell her to take it somewhere else. I get too much trouble already," Sasuke replied. "Or tell her to quit. The three of us make enough money."

"_You_ wanna hear that speech about being an independent woman again?" Naruto asked, eyebrow raised.

Sasuke set the limbic splitter decks to play on their own for the next two minutes. "She's already got a legitimate skill. And she could hold a job in a med center if she stopped getting fired for stealing that shit."

"**You** tell her," was all Naruto replied.

Sasuke checked the decks one last time, grabbed his coat, and left the booth. Naruto followed, half bouncing.

"This is gonna be great!" he said, catching the corner of the hallway with one hand and swinging around. "That bandage guy was so strong--I can't wait to fight him again."

Sasuke snorted with faintly amused exasperation. "It's great if you like feeling like an Ultrakid," he replied. "If I'd known we were going to be stuck in twelve-year-olds, I wouldn't have agreed." He turned down another corner of the hallway, and hit the shoulder of the first person within reach on the couch. "I'm leaving. Go take over the decks before the timer runs off."

The guy opened his eyes hazily, and then glared up at him. "You're gonna be sacked if you do this too much," he snapped.

"Whatever," Sasuke replied, turning around and moving Naruto out of his way. Naruto shoved him back as they headed out to the dancefloor.

"Bitch bitch bitch," he said, dodging the elbow Sasuke snapped at his ribs. "I know you were having fun--you **should've** been, considering how much you were staring at that teacher guy's ass."

Sasuke didn't reply for a moment, until Naruto snickered in an I-thought-so-so-HA.

"At least _I_ can tell the difference between a boy and a girl," Sasuke said flatly.

"Fff," Naruto replied, waving him off before draping his arm over Sasuke's shoulder. He ignored the other teenager's attempt to shrug it off--Sasuke intensely disliked public displays of affection, which only made Naruto more prone to them--and used it to shove him into the main area of the club. "C'mon, let's find her and get home!"  
-

Naruto had neglected to mention that Sakura was buried in the crush with Ino, so when Sasuke spotted her dancing with the shadowgirl halfway into the middle, he refused to go any further. Naruto called him a coward and left him to get shoved around by the dancers as he forced his way over to Sakura. She yelled something unintelligible to Ino as he started dragging her off, and waved high overhead before they lost sight of each other. Naruto then grabbed Sasuke's collar before he could kick the feet out from under the girl who was trying to force him to dance, and made it out of the club without giving in to the urge to bite someone.

Sakura started rubbing her bare arms when they got out in the cold, so Sasuke shrugged off his jacket and handed it to her.

"The game's not gonna start all over again, is it?" she asked Naruto as she pulled it on. "It'll take hours just to get back to that point."

"Nah," he said, rummaging through his pockets for the car keys. "I asked Jiraiya, and he said that it reads where you last where and then picks up from there. That's why it's part yellow."

"Cool," Sakura said, mildly impressed.

"Weird," Sasuke replied. "Since when are blacks that high-tech?"

Naruto slung an arm over Sasuke's shoulders and around his neck. Sasuke made an irritated noise, but put up with it. He took the car keys from Naruto's hand.

"Don't be bitter just 'cause you're still choking while stroking in," Naruto said. He wrapped his other arm around Sakura's waist while still looking at Sasuke, and added with a leer, "You'll get used to it. You just need more _practice_."

"Die," Sasuke replied.

Naruto laughed, leaning on Sasuke to do so and thus pulling Sakura closer until her hip bumped his through the jacket. The three of them managed not to stumble too much on the way to the car.


	3. game 3

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. Vurt belongs to Jeff Noon.

Vurt Ninjas 3: In which the chapter is really short, and it's all starting to go wrong.  
——————

-

They were all a little addicted by the time things started getting weird.  
-

Sasuke was the one who jerked them out.

Sakura blinked hazily, caught in the Vurt lag; but even the lag couldn't overpower the pain along her head and shoulders. She bit down a hiss as the throbbing increased with the return to sense. Naruto was lying on the floor, arms and head resting on the cushion he'd tugged off of the couch, and his head was tilted to the side so Sakura couldn't catch his eyes.

It took her a moment to realize that Sasuke was curled up on the floor by the couch, one hand clamped over his left shoulder.

"Aurgh. . . ." Sakura tried to sit up, and then quickly abandoned that plan and just rolled over onto her side. "Are you okay?" she asked, looking down at Sasuke.

"My shoulder hurts," he replied.

"You're digging your nails into it," Sakura said helpfully.

"It _really fucking hurts_," Sasuke hissed at her, shoving himself into a seated position. He folded in on himself again immediately afterward, and Sakura reached out and pulled his hand away. She began rubbing her palm against the area around his shoulder and neck, avoiding the little bleeding crescents from his nails.

"We must've screwed with Hobart's Law," she mumbled, trying to force a coherent explanation out through the pain and the lingering lag. "My head's killing me, too." _There must have been some trade of worth . . . what did any of us leave behind. . . ?_ she wondered, and then shoved the calculations away.

"Dream snakes," she added, pulling away from Sasuke to rub her forehead. He immediately gripped a hand over the area again. "There might be a dream snake in here that came over, if we all feel like shit. . . ."

"I feel fine," Naruto said quietly.

Sasuke and Sakura both looked over at him.

". . . Then **you** can go look for the snake," she finally said. Sakura then bit her lip before forcing herself to sit up, letting her legs dangle over the edge of the couch as she continued to press a hand to her head.

"I'm not doing this again," Sasuke said flatly. "Ever."

"Okay," Naruto said, still staring at the wall.

Sasuke shivered once at the uncomplaining acquiescence, and yanked his hand away from his shoulder.


	4. game 4

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. Vurt belongs to Jeff Noon.

Vurt Ninjas 4: In which Sasuke and Sakura are easily bribed into doing stupid things. Like agreeing with Naruto.  
——————

-

Like I said, they were all a little addicted--and Naruto was not above bribing Sakura and Sasuke with feathers to get his way. It took about two weeks for him to get to that point, though.

He slammed the door hard behind him upon his entrance; Sakura, who was stretched out on the couch, reading a magazine, rolled her eyes but didn't look over. She didn't need to.

"Cheapass pervert bastard!" Naruto announced, louder than necessary so that Sasuke, wherever he was, would be able to hear as well. He shucked off his jacket and threw it over the end of the couch, causing Sakura to grumble and push the sleeve away from her face.

"**He** gets all the credit on the Marquees, and **I'm** the one nearly getting bitten by dream snakes making the damn feathers while he screws the actresses in the back room!"

"Shut up," Sasuke replied, looking out from the bathroom long enough to glare at Naruto. His expression might have had more effect, were it not for the toothpaste flecked at the corner of his mouth. "Kill him if you want a better position."

Sakura raised an eyebrow, turning another page. "You know, Sasuke, all your solutions seem to involve murder. How've you managed to stay employed this long?"

He didn't bother to reply, having already disappeared back into the bathroom. Naruto made a grumbling noise deep in his throat, and flopped down on the couch. Sakura barely pulled her legs up in time to keep them from being sat on.

"You're getting plenty of experience now, aren't you, though?" she asked, looking at him over the edge of the magazine. "If he's leaving almost all the editing of the dream smoke to you, won't you know enough to start working at a higher pay somewhere else?"

"Yeah, yeah," Naruto muttered, throwing an arm over the back of the couch. He was holding a brown packet in his hand, and Sakura's eyes flicked to it before moving back to him when he continued speaking. "But I don't **want** to work somewhere else. I want Jiraiya to acknowledge I'm practically running his damn business for him and start putting my name on the Marquees!"

There was a sound that very well could have been the words "sentimental bitch" from the bathroom, but they were sufficiently covered by the sound of the tap that Sakura didn't have to tackle Naruto to keep him from running in there. Still, since he was now making a very pronounced growling noise, she lifted a foot and poked the packet in his hand. "Present?"

"Yep!" Naruto said cheerily. He opened the packet and pulled out five pink feathers. "I got you four Graafian Trips, and a Karmic Suture--you haven't tried that one, right?" he asked.

"Eeee!" Sakura tossed the magazine aside and sat up quickly, pulling the feathers out of his hand. "Thank you!"

Naruto grinned and dropped the packet in her lap, before looking over to the short hallway that led to the rest of the apartment and calling, "Oi! Get your ass in here, I have stuff for you too!"

Sasuke muttered something again, but he did it as he was walking into the room, pulling a dark t-shirt over his head. Sakura didn't make out what he had said (if it was even legible in the first place) because she had peeked into the packet and spotted, beneath three blacks and a blue, a black feather with yellow fringe. She paused for several moments, and then fished out the blue.

Naruto glanced at her long enough to verify that she had seen it, before taking the packet and holding it out to Sasuke. "Two Mainframes and a Mickey Finn--and you're sick, you know that?" he added nonchalantly.

"Mn," Sasuke replied, taking the packet. He wasn't very verbal when he first woke up.

"And a Goldfish," Naruto said, pointing a thumb at the blue that Sakura was currently tucking in with her pinks. Sasuke didn't bother with his usual retort that it was _she_ who used the blues, because he'd spotted the feather at the bottom as well.

"And I got a hold of another Konoha," Naruto finished a little more casually that was believable. He threw his arm back over the edge of the couch.

Sasuke glanced at Sakura from the corner of his eye. She'd shifted the six feathers into a little fan, and was hiding a majority of her expression with it--but she looked back at Sasuke steadily.

Naruto seemed to realize that it was Sasuke who would need the most convincing, because he'd already started on the best tactic.

"Come on, we've still got a whole slew of people to fight in those exam things," he said, watching as much of Sasuke's face as he could see with the other man half turned away from him. "Like that eyebrows freak who was hitting on our woman!"

Sasuke made an interesting expression at that. Sakura frowned behind her fan and said, "Ex_cuse_ me?" but Naruto barreled on.

"And what about that guy with the creepy goth eye makeup?" Naruto leaned forward, speaking earnestly. "Come **on**, Sasuke, don't tell me you don't want to see if we get to fight them after we get out of that damn forest!"

Sasuke stared into the packet for several silent minutes, idly shifting the feathers inside with a finger. Finally, he pulled his hand out and tossed it onto Naruto's lap.

"I'm not fucking with **any**thing before breakfast," he said flatly, turning away toward the kitchen.

Naruto's face broke out into a broad grin, and he looked over at Sakura. She smiled back, hoping that the fan of feathers was opaque enough to cover the faint trepidation in it.


	5. game 5

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. Vurt belongs to Jeff Noon.

Vurt Ninjas 5, the backstory chapter: or, how Naruto introduced Sasuke and Sakura to each other in the worst way possible.  
——————

-

It was either fate, karma, luck, or just the fact that Shizune's clinic had been the one closest to Jiraiya's workshop, that led Naruto to one day slam open the door to the waiting room and announce that he was **fucking _dying_**: Sakura could never figure out which. Most days she figured it was karma.

"Sakura? I'll double your pay for tonight if you'll do something discreetly," Shizune said as she opened the door to the second office.

"Sure!" she replied automatically. "What is it?"

"Go treat the guy in the end of the hall. He has a dream snake bite."

Sakura frowned even as she moved to the supply cabinets and began pulling out the snake weed. "What do I need to do that's discreet?"

"Make his lies into something that can actually be put on a report," Shizune said wryly. "He's associated with a good friend of mine, so. . . ."

"On it, ma'am!"  
-

Naruto was feverish by the time Sakura got to the room and began applying the snake weed to the bite on his forearm, but he regained enough sense to start leering at her a few minutes later. She pulled the collar of her shirt up slightly and thought _Dogs_, before picking up the clipboard Shizune had left behind. "Okay, what happened?"

"A dream snake bit me," he replied cheerfully.

"Thanks," Sakura drawled. "How?"

". . . I tripped over it. And then it bit me."

Sakura set the clipboard on her lap and gave him a look.

"It was in a dark alley," Naruto added.

"Uh-huh," Sakura replied, and reminded herself that she was getting paid double.  
-

Two days later, she came out of the clinic to find Naruto sitting against the wall.

"You have to go _in_to the building before we can help you," she commented as she walked past. He scrabbled onto his feet.

"Nah, I was waiting for you!" he replied with a grin. Sakura gave him a long, sidewise look. He held up his hands non-threateningly. "I'm not a crazy stalker guy, I just figured, I owed you dinner. Or something. For saving my life and stuff."

"It's just my job," she replied, keeping the almost-smile off her face.

He kept grinning despite the barb, which meant he was either ignoring it or it had gone over his head. Sakura couldn't say which for sure. "Well, it's my life. So, can I buy you a burger or dango or something?"

"Your life is worth a burger?"

He held his hands up a little higher, mock-helplessly. "Hey, hey, I'm on limited funds here! Your place charged an arm and a leg for that damn antidote, and my cheapass boss won't cover it, says it's my fault!" He gave her another grin, this one a little plaintive. "If I'd planned it, I would've made sure to set aside enough money to treat you properly. But, since . . . yeah. My life is worth hamburger meat."

Sakura was having a hard time holding back laughter at this point, though she didn't really want to encourage him.

"Just dinner," she said, keeping her tone even.

"Just dinner," he agreed. He smiled so _much_, she thought.  
-

Naruto was totally not her type. He was obnoxious, loud, coarse, and he was enough of those things that she could tell even when he was struggling to be cool.

He also worked in the Pornovurt industry. Sakura didn't agree to meet him for a second date, but when he was sitting outside the clinic the next day, she let him talk her into dinner again.  
-

Sakura left the clinic a week later. She'd worked out a deal with the place: she didn't steal drugs from there, and Shizune let her come back whenever she'd built up enough savings or wanted to drop out of the trade for a little while. She gave Naruto her phone number with serious regrets, but he didn't call excessively, so she stopped worrying.

She got fired from the newest clinic a month later, at the most inconvenient time--Ino was out of town. And she'd taken Shikamaru with her, so there was no way for Sakura to get into her apartment. (Chouji probably had a spare key, but Sakura didn't get along very well with him, so there wasn't much she could do.)

Really, she wouldn't have called Naruto, but the head doctor had said he was calling the police and she _couldn't_ go back to her apartment until something bigger happened to attract their attention.

"Sure!" was all he'd said, when she finished asking. "I'll pick you up!"

". . . Okay," Sakura had replied, and wondered why he hadn't even asked anything. "Thanks."

He arrived at the bus stop she'd directed him to twenty minutes after hanging up, blaming the traffic. Sakura stared at the motorcycle with a raised eyebrow. "You didn't seem like the kind of guy to drive one of those."

"Oh, this piece of junk belongs to Sasuke. He _has_ to be a badass." Naruto tugged off his helmet and gave it to her. "But we can still fit your stuff on it!"

Sakura was quietly grateful that she had only two suitcases.

The gratefulness only lasted until Naruto pulled up in front of the building that he apparently lived in, and then Sakura went back to wondering what the hell she had gotten herself into, in-between thinking _Oh, not **another** shadowgirl._

Naruto had slid off the bike and started unstrapping her luggage while Sakura was still staring at the door the shadowgirl had gone through. And she _couldn't_ go back to her apartment for a while. And Shizune wouldn't let her sleep on her couch or overnight at the clinic, since she didn't want to be implicated in anything Sakura did. And Chouji really probably wouldn't give her a spare key, so. . . .

_Ino, get your ass back into town _soon _or I will kill you. So much_, Sakura thought, and then followed Naruto's waving arm into the building.

Four flights of stairs up, and Naruto stopped on the landing where the shadowgirl was unlocking a door. _What the hell is_--

"Oi, Sasuke!"

--_no way_, Sakura thought, and Naruto was already going on.

"This is Sakura!" he said, pointing back at her. "She's going to be living with us now!"

Sakura was a perceptive young woman. She only needed two seconds of seeing the look on Sasuke's face to realize that he wasn't just a roommate.  
-

Sakura and Sasuke's first bonding experience was beating the crap out of Naruto.

After he fell down the stairs as he tried to dodge Sakura throwing her suitcase at his shins while Sasuke aimed a punch at his jaw, she made the shadowgirl stop. Sasuke shoved her arm away and kicked the door open, and Sakura went halfway down the stairs and dragged Naruto into the apartment by his jacket collar.

Sakura was just short of terrified when Sasuke shrugged harshly out of the jacket he was wearing and she realized that he was not, in fact, a shadowgirl, but a guy. A zombie.

Except he wasn't dripping flesh, so he couldn't be a zombie. At least, she didn't think he could be a zombie. How would he have gotten into the city in the first place? And why would Naruto be **living** with him?

But . . . he was still a shadowgirl. But a guy. It defied all the medical knowledge Sakura _had_.

Naruto sat on the table edge as she applied iodine harder than necessary to the bruised cut along his face, and tried to ignore the fact that Sasuke was sitting on the couch across from them and glaring. It was hard, especially since Sakura kept glancing at him from the corner of her eye to make sure he really was a guy, and not about to try and eat her.

"Owwww," Naruto whined as she pressed the lump of cotton against his cut. "Sakura, that hurts!"

"You deserve it!" she snapped. "Hell, if I'd--I can't believe you didn't even say anyth--what **are **you, part Robo or something? Augh!"

"Eheh," Naruto muttered, looking down at the ground and scratching the back of his head.

Sakura hesitated--in her peripheral vision, Sasuke had started. A moment later, he stood up and left the apartment, pulling the door shut behind him.

"Dammit," Naruto snapped, and stood up.

_What_. . . . "H--. . . he isn't part Robo, right?" Sakura asked.

"No, no . . . here, put your stuff wherever you want, I'll be back soon." Before she could say anything, he had wrenched the door open again and was yelling down the stairs. "Asshole, get back here and listen to--HEY! I said get **back** here!"

After the noise of Naruto taking the stairs several at a time lessened, Sakura pushed the door shut and tried Ino's phone again.  
-

Naruto either didn't find Sasuke or wasn't able to force him back until early the next morning. Sakura had already made herself dinner from some of the leftovers in the fridge, had scrubbed down the surprisingly clean bathtub with the chemicals under the sink, and had locked herself in the bathroom with her suitcases, her cell phone, a couch cushion and a blanket she'd unearthed from the closet. She woke from a shallow sleep when Naruto and Sasuke continued yelling at each other on their way through the apartment, and then pulled the blanket up over her ears and tried to fall back asleep when one of them slammed a door further down the hall.

It didn't work well, and Sakura had been drifting on the edges of consciousness when someone knocked on the bathroom door hours later.

"Hey, you," Sasuke said tonelessly. "I need in there."  
-

Sakura risked leaving her bags in the bathroom, but took her wallet and her phone with her when she stepped out. She combed her fingers through her hair as she made her way to the kitchen/living room area.

Naruto wasn't in there, and Sakura didn't want to pass the bathroom to check in the bedroom, so instead she called Shizune's clinic and spent several minutes sweet-talking the woman into letting her go back to work in a couple days. Sasuke came into the kitchen while she was talking, and started making eggs.

"You are almost more trouble than you are useful, do you know that, Sakura?" Shizune said crossly.

Sakura had heard it all before, so she rolled her eyes and sounded apologetic. "I know, I know Ms. Shizune. I'm sorry."

The woman sighed. "Come in Friday. No, Thursday--I have too many people scheduled for just me and Migaki."

"Yay! Thank you very much!"

"Don't thank me, I'm giving you all the contagious ones," Shizune replied. "Goodbye."

"Bye, ma'am." Sakura waited until Shizune hung up, and then closed her phone and made herself look over at Sasuke. "Um, hi. . . ."

"Mn," he replied.

Sakura toyed with the phone, and couldn't decide if it would be more gauche to point out that he medically shouldn't exist or to apologize for sleeping with his boyfriend. "I'm . . . sorry about just appearing here, but I needed somewhere to stay, and--"

"Whatever," Sasuke replied. "You can sleep on the couch."

"Okay." She fidgeted with the phone again. ". . . Where's Naruto?"

"He already went to work," Sasuke replied, and flipped the eggs. "I work nights, so don't make a lot of noise."

"All right," Sakura said, and then hesitated. "I'm sorry about--I didn't kn--"

"I know," Sasuke said flatly, scrambling the eggs with a disturbingly stabbing motion. "He's a dumbass and he's always been a dumbass. Do you want some?"

"--Yeah. I'm going to go buy food for myself later, so. . . ."

Sasuke scraped half the eggs onto a plate next to the stove, then dropped the pan on the unlit burner and turned the stove off.

Sasuke's back had been to her the whole time he was at the stove. Sakura didn't really want to deal with him face-to-face, so she used that moment to escape to the bathroom.  
-

By the time she got out of the shower, the bedroom door was shut and the eggs in the pan were cold. Sasuke had thrown the spatula into the sink, so Sakura washed it off and reused the plate from her dinner last night.  
-

When Naruto came back that evening, bitching about Jiraiya trying to take over the Pornovurt industry by working him to death, he seemed surprised when Sakura said that Sasuke had already left for work.

"Arg," he muttered, slumping in a kitchen chair. "That damn club doesn't even _open_ for another hour. . . ."

Sakura bit her lip, but refrained from making an apologetic comment--it was Naruto's own fault, the two-timer. Quasi-two-timer, whatever, he could have at least warned _one_ of them.

"Well, I'll leave as soon as my friend gets back into town, and I'll be out at work in a couple days, so I can avoid him. Good luck."

"Aw, Sakura, don't be like that," Naruto said, and she gave him a look. "I'm sorry, okay? I didn't think to say anything, I just went to get you."

"Why'd you ask me out in the _first_ place?" she retorted, leaning against a chair. "If you were with him first, that's just . . . being a creep. **And** you're lucky I'm not a--a homophobe, or I probably would have run screaming out of--_Jesus_, Naruto, what **_is_** he?"

". . . Yeah," Naruto replied. "I, uh, I don't really know that story either. But he's not a zombie! I promise, I'd never invite you somewhere that had zombies."

Sakura gave him a look of utter disbelief and wondered if this was an act or he really was that clueless and possibly insane. "Why did you--even ask me out at _all?_"

Naruto made a couple frustrated hand motions and slumped over the table. "I dunno. You were really cute?"

Sakura stared at him for a few more moments, and then pinched the bridge of her nose. **_Dogs_**.  
-

And that was how it all started.


	6. game 6

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. Vurt belongs to Jeff Noon.

Okay, since Pollen is out of print and I'm not sure about the status of Vurt, a thirty second rundown in what on earth I'm talking about: _The_ Vurt is an extended dreamspace, in a nutshell. But it's dreams that can be condensed and made physical; the most common way of accessing it is by sticking a feather that's been coated in condensed-dream liquid into your throat. The best analogy is to treat it like virtual reality--it's just a virtual reality where the programmers, characters, and some players can tamper with the real world.

For those who've gotten a hold of Vurt or Pollen, this story takes place before either of them, when the Vurt is still on the cusp of becoming self-dreaming (you'll need to know that to understand what the hell Kabuto's going on about much later).

Vurt Ninjas 6: In which Naruto met Sasuke, God help us all.  
——————

-

The first time Naruto saw Sasuke, he was chasing some asshole who'd dared to steal the package of pinks that he was supposed to be delivering (and Jiraiya would take the loss out of his paycheck, and next month's paycheck, because the cheap bastard didn't pay him enough to cover it all at once), and saw a shadowgirl beating the hell out of three guys in the corner of one of the parking lots he ran through.

Naruto ran faster, caught up to the thief, cracked his head against the pavement for good measure, and then stuffed the package inside his jacket and ran back to help the girl out.

(Some of the workers at the orphanage he'd lived in as a child had argued over whether Naruto was a fourth or an eighth of a dog, because he had some of the physical and mental attributes but lacked the instinctive hatreds. The argument had actually gone on for several weeks, until the man running the place, a man with a ponytail and a scar across his nose, said it didn't matter whether Naruto was a forth or an eighth or a half--they just needed to get him to stop punching the kids who called him domesticated.)

When he got back, the area looked empty, except for two guys on the ground and the other one jammed halfway into the closed dumpster. Naruto whistled as he stared down at one who had an umbrella jammed through the side of his stomach (Naruto would later learn that Sasuke filed the tips of his umbrellas for just such a purpose) and thought, _I have _got _to meet this girl_.

He caught the scent a few seconds before Sasuke vaulted over the dumpster, aiming a foot at Naruto's face.  
-

He was lucky that Sasuke was already tired from the previous fight, though with the amount of hits that the other man got to his chest, he was sure that the feathers were mangled--Jiraiya was gonna **kill** him. So much for eating that month.

Naruto spat blood from his busted lip to the side, then looked back down at Sasuke, whose stomach he was sitting on and wrists he had pinned on both sides to the blacktop, and said, "Holy shit, you're not a girl!"

Sasuke tried to knee him in the spine with that, so Naruto shifted back to sit on his upper thighs, kept the grip on his wrists, planted a foot on his chest, and continued to stare.

"You're way too pretty to be a zombie," he said decisively. "What are you, a Vurt creature thing?"

"Get the hell off, you fucking dog," Sasuke snarled, the first time he'd spoken.

"Spare me the racist bullshit," Naruto replied, rolling his eyes. "You're not a shadow . . . smoker-thing. Seriously, are you a Vurt creature? I never saw a talking one before."

"I'll kill you," Sasuke snarled, and tried to buck him off.

Naruto spat more blood to the side and said, "Yeah, that's not really making me want to move," which only prompted vulgarity and more attempts to get free from Sasuke.

The staring match could have continued for a long time--Naruto was fascinated by seeing a male smoker, and wouldn't have moved until the cops came or Sasuke got back enough strength to throw him off--but one of the guys on the ground, the one that wasn't skewered with the umbrella, started to move.  
-

The next time Naruto saw Sasuke, when the cops broke up a rave the other man had been DJing in the warehouse area Jiraiya's workshop was in, he punched him in the cheek and told Sasuke to pay him back for the feathers he'd ruined.

Sasuke had stared at him for a moment, and then kicked him in the stomach with steel-toed boots.

Later, after Naruto managed to pin him again, Sasuke finally remembered who he was. He promptly redoubled his refusal to pay for the feathers and told Naruto to give him his damn umbrella back. Naruto said he didn't have it, he didn't take stuff from pansies who ran away after a fight. Sasuke worked an arm free and punched him.

It was week later before they learned each others' names. It took about a month for them to hold a civil conversation, and that was over whether blacks were better than pinks, and it degenerated after about half an hour.

It was obviously fate that they met, because nothing else explained it.


	7. game 7

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. Vurt belongs to Jeff Noon.

Vurt Ninjas 7: Enter Kabuto, enter plot.  
——————

-

They never suspected the dream snake of being planted--after all, that kind of interference with reality was something only Game Cats were supposed to be capable of.  
-

When Sasuke swore loudly outside, Sakura didn't think anything of it. When he crashed against the door, however, she frowned and went to check. She took a kitchen knife with her, because it wouldn't be the first time someone Sasuke had pissed off had followed him home.

Sasuke fell backwards when she opened the door, halfway over the threshold, and Sakura noticed him clutching his leg before she noticed the dream snake. When she saw it, she shrieked, dropped the knife by Sasuke, and jumped back.

Then she ran for the dishes drying by the sink, grabbed the nearest bowl, and went back. Sasuke was trying to drive the snake away with the knife. Sakura threw the bowl at its head.

It dodged, but not enough--the bowl hit its upper body. In the second it was dazed, Sasuke slammed the knife through its head, before grabbing the rim and using it to shove the snake through the railing. Then he made a sharp noise and curled around his leg again.

Sakura crouched. "Sasuke?"

Below, the bowl made a faint sound as it broke on the entryway's landing. "Bit me," he hissed.

"Oh shit," Sakura replied.  
-

"Hi, Naruto," someone said from the doorway to the workshop.

Naruto recognized his voice, but was in the middle of carefully applying phantasm liquid to the newest batch of pinks, so he didn't look up. "Hey, Kabuto! The old pervert's in his office, if you're here with supplies."

"Thanks," Kabuto said, at the same moment that the phone in the front office rang.

Naruto waited for five rings, and then swore and said he wasn't a fucking maid and carefully hooked the feather he was holding in the drying rack before going to pick it up.

"Yo, wh--"

"I need to talk to Naruto!"

"Sakura?"

"Naruto? Oh thank--go to Shizune's clinic and tell her to get snakeweed ready!"

"_What_?" was Naruto's eloquent reply.

"Sasuke got bit. I'm on my way, but the stupid bus is taking too long so go tell her!"

"Shit! Okay, where--how far are you?"

"Naruto, just **go**!" Sakura snapped.

"But--" and then Sakura hung up. Naruto slammed the phone down and yelled, "**Jiraiya**! I'm leaving!"

There was the sound of the older man calling "What?" from his office down the hall, but Naruto was already tearing out the door.  
-

The car the three of them used belonged to Sasuke--he'd bought it after his motorcycle was stolen several months ago. (He never answered their questions about where he'd gotten the money. Naruto eventually told Sakura to stop asking; the ability to produce money from nowhere was a Sasuke thing, and considering the thin edge of being fired that the man walked, Naruto wasn't going to complain. He also added that they didn't need to worry since it didn't smell like Sasuke was whoring himself out, at which point the conversation was ended by Sasuke overhearing and reacting predictably.) Naruto drove it during the day, since the bus routes ran much closer to the clinic than the warehouses that Jiraiya's workshops were located in, and since he was usually back before Sasuke had to leave for work.

Sakura flipped her phone shut and looked over at Sasuke, who had his forehead pressed against the window. They were sitting in the back of the bus, Sasuke looking sufficiently sick enough that the people there had abandoned their seats, and Sakura had pressed herself close enough to him that he wouldn't fall over whenever they hit a pothole.

"Geez!" she said a moment later, trying to keep her voice up without making it too loud. "I tell him to go, he starts asking more questions. . . ."

Sasuke didn't even expend the energy to grunt. Sakura fell silent again, watched the street signs go by, and checked his pulse each time the bus stopped.  
-

When they reached the stop that was two blocks and a corner from Shizune's clinic, Naruto was there waiting. He grabbed the arm that Sakura hadn't thrown over Sakura's shoulder and immediately began dragging Sasuke towards the clinic, freeing her from most of the weight.

"You jerk," Naruto said with aggressive cheerfulness, when Sakura made him stop at a yellow-turning-to-red light since he'd be doing none of them good getting run over, "making Sakura haul your ass around like that."

"Shut up," Sasuke muttered.

"Mr. Badass can't even walk to the clinic after being stupid enough to get bit. **I** walked all the way here from work!"

"Die."

Sakura wanted to yell at them, but she let them continue to pretend, and clenched her free fist and matched Naruto's stride when they reached the clinic's street.  
-

Sasuke wore loose clothing when he had to go out in public, so Shizune thought he was a flat-chested shadowgirl up to the moment he'd collapsed on one of the tables and she'd removed his pants to reach the bite, at which point she freaked out and Sakura took over the treatment. Naruto pleasantly herded her out of the room, saying didn't it suck for Sasuke to be a hermaphrodite but get totally gypped on the tits part of the deal?

Sakura knew Sasuke wasn't too badly affected yet, because in the midst of his labored breathing he was muttering a particularly colorful threat on Naruto's life. She told him to be quiet and let her work.  
-

When she was done, Sakura went back into the waiting room and told Naruto to sit the hell down before he wore out the carpet or scared any more patients, and then Shizune motioned her into the office.

"Is . . . he okay?" Shizune asked.

"Yeah," Sakura said. "He'll be fine. Thank you for having it ready, Ms. Shizune--did you already give Naruto the bill?"

The older woman shook her head. "No; go ahead and set it up on the computer. He should be capable of walking out of here in another half-hour." Sakura nodded once--she already knew that, sheesh, she'd treated enough bites already--and then Shizune's gaze shifted to slightly over her shoulder. "You don't need to come into work tomorrow."

Sakura blinked and then stared.

". . . Ms. Shizune!"

"I run this place almost at a loss, Sakura," Shizune said, eyes shifting from over her shoulder to the floor. "You _know_ that. I have a lot of extra expenses to take care of. I can't _afford_ to be associated with anything that will attract the authorities' attention."

"That's--he's only a client, you can say he came from anywhere! When have I ever--"

"No," Shizune said, and finally looked her in the eyes. "Someone came asking about you a couple of days ago, Sakura. He wouldn't produce ID, so I didn't talk to him, but. . . ."

Shizune shook her head, and looked past Sakura's shoulder again. "You're a good doctor, for being so young. You'll be a great loss. But I don't want you in my clinic."

Sakura's lips parted, but she couldn't say anything. After a long, ugly silence, she left.  
-

She rung the bill up on the computer and then fetched Sasuke's wallet and information and paid it. She was still behind the desk when Sasuke came down the hall.

"Hey, you still need to rest!" Sakura called as he pushed the door.

"Work," he said.

Naruto came up and pulled the door further back, holding it open. "Dumbass, you can't make it to work tonight, you'll die."

"I have to tell them I'm not coming in," Sasuke replied curtly. "They'd love an excuse to fire me."

"I'll do it," Sakura replied, folding the printout confirmation of the money transfer. "Naruto can go get the car and take you back to the apartment."

"Sakura, I can do it! Just keep him here until I get back--"

"It's best I leave," Sakura said flatly, handing Sasuke the paper. He pushed it into his pocket while Naruto tilted his head at her tone.

"What happe--"

"Naruto, go get the damn car," Sasuke said. "Sakura and I'll wait at the gas station on the corner. I want something to eat."

Sakura frowned and looked at him. "You're hungry? That's not a normal side effect."

"I haven't had lunch," Sasuke replied, pushing away from the door and heading for the exit. Sakura followed, keeping an eye on his flushed look, and Naruto trailed behind them. "I'm nauseous, but I'm hungry."

Sakura hummed. "That makes more sense, then. . . . Okay." She looked over her shoulder to Naruto. "We'll head down there--how soon can you pick us up?"

Naruto was annoyed, but he could tell how agitated Sakura was from her scent, so he saw them halfway down the sidewalk to the gas station and then jogged back to the warehouses and the car.  
-

Kabuto was gone by the time he returned; Jiraiya yelled at him for taking off in the middle of work, but Naruto replied that it was an emergency and left before Jiraiya could make him explain.


	8. game 8

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. Vurt belongs to Jeff Noon

Vurt Ninjas 8: In which no one is safe from the Vurt. Resistance is futile.  
—————

-

Sakura was the most clear-sighted of the three of them. By the time Sasuke nearly killed a man outside their front door, she'd begun to realize that something was going wrong.  
-

Sakura had found another job at a different clinic, but with no letter of reference and no place to return to, she was only working part-time and wasn't interested in trying to steal with such a limited access to the medicines. She hadn't been out selling for nearly three weeks; finally, one of the junkies found where she was living and went to see whether she'd died or moved or been arrested in order to spread it to the others. Sasuke had answered the door.

Naruto made Sakura stay in the kitchen, where the wall hid her from the door and the sight of the junkie (his name was Ogano; Sakura had recognized his voice, and she'd always kept a small enough client base to be able to remember names). He sat on the table and glared at the doorway, while Sasuke flatly and repeatedly told Ogano to go away.

After the fifth time that he had demanded to know _something_ about Sakura, Sasuke hadn't replied. Sakura watched Naruto's face for some clue to the silence.

Naruto frowned and started to speak a second before Ogano began screaming.

Naruto dived off the table, and he and Sakura ran for the door. Naruto reached the outside first, which was extremely fortunate for Ogano, because by that point Sasuke had already flipped him over the railing.

Naruto barely managed to grab Ogano's leg before he wound up falling four stories to the linoleum floor of the apartment entryway. He dragged the teenager back up as Sakura shoved Sasuke in the chest and asked what the **fuck** did he think he was **doing**! He stared at her silently.

"_Fuck!_" Naruto snarled, after Ogano had collapsed on the landing, cursing and panting. "**Fuck**, Sasuke, you would have killed him! Just shut the motherfucking door!"

"I don't like him," Sasuke replied. "He has the same red hair."

It took them a moment to understand.

When they did, Sakura pulled back. Naruto looked down at the landing, and then at Ogano.

After several long seconds of silence, punctuated only by the junkie's continued muttered cursing and the overly-curious convenience store cashier who lived in one of the second floor apartments looking out her door, Naruto reached down and grabbed a fistful of Ogano's shirt. He yanked the teenager up before slamming him against the railing.

"Fuck off," Naruto told him. "If you talk to anyone about this, I'll hunt you down and break your teeth into the curb, understand?"

Sakura wrenched his hand loose and gave him a glare before looking Ogano in the eye. "I'm not selling anything at the moment," she said soothingly. "I don't have any access. I'll be back in the business in another month--I'll give you half off what you first buy then, okay? But you should really leave now."

Ogano fled without saying anything. When Sakura looked over her shoulder, she saw that Naruto was baring his teeth at him. She whacked him on the arm, and then hesitated and didn't look at Sasuke.

The three of them stood on the landing, until Naruto turned his glare on the cashier and scared her back into her apartment. Sasuke, who'd been watching Ogano run down the stairs and out the door, glanced at the slammed door before snorting and beginning to walk back into the apartment. Naruto stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

When Sasuke turned to glare at him, Naruto punched him in the face, hard. Sasuke had to brace a hand against the wall to keep from crashing into it.

"That wasn't Gaara," Naruto said lowly, before Sasuke could retaliate. "Keep them separate. It's just the Vurt in your blood. You _have_ to keep them separate."

Sasuke spit the blood from his cut lip on the floor and hissed, "I fucking know that!"

"They don't even look the same," Sakura added.

"I _know!_" Sasuke snapped. "He should have gone away!"

"We can't **kill** people!" Naruto snapped back, shoving Sasuke at the door before grabbing Sakura's wrist and pulling her behind him. "We're not t--not in that world!"

Sasuke gave him a long look. He jerked away when Naruto started to shove him again, and stormed into the apartment.  
-

"Does . . . does the bite really make it bleed over that much?" Sakura asked, later. Her voice was quiet, even though it was just her and Naruto in the apartment. Sasuke had left for work early to avoid eating dinner with them.

Naruto shut the cabinets and handed her the bowls; Sakura began spooning the noodles and chicken into them. "Yeah," he answered, "at first. He'll get over it soon. I mean, he should. It only took me about a week."

Sakura bit her lip, and spooned the noodles into the second bowl slower so that she could have something to concentrate on. "But you're . . . did you act this bad?"

Naruto sat down heavily in one of the chairs. "It's not that--"

"You _saw_ the look he gave you, Naruto," Sakura interrupted. "It's the same one from. . . ."

Naruto stabbed one of his noodles with a chopstick. "Okay, he's a little worse. But he's always been a violent bastard."

"He almost _ki_--"

"I know, Sakura." Naruto hesitated, and finally shrugged. "I dunno, maybe the Vurt's just reacting weirder with him. But it'll wear off pretty soon, I promise."

"How much?" Sakura asked, and when Naruto looked up at her she sat down. "It never goes all away, right?"

Naruto slowly chewed two more bites before answering her. Sakura didn't pick up her chopsticks.

"It's not that bad," he finally said, looking down at the bowl. "I almost call you 'Sakura-chan' once in a while, but that's **all**. It'll be okay."

Sakura looked down at her bowl, and then broke her chopsticks apart quietly.  
-

Her normal reaction in these situations was to call Ino--after a few suggestions that Sakura dump the both of them and start dating less violent, less gay men, the shadowgirl usually had good advice--but Sakura found dialing Ino's number distasteful these days.

—

As much as Naruto wanted to believe that things were going to be okay, he was neither blind nor stupid. He could chalk some of the growing side effects of the game up to his and Sasuke's bites, but it was becoming obvious that it was getting to Sakura, too.  
-

Sasuke and Sakura got along well enough--better than he deserved, he knew, though Naruto would never admit that to either of them--but at some point after the section with Gaara ended and storyline with Naruto's character got tangled up with the character almost exactly like Jiraiya (when he'd first appeared Naruto had immediately crashed into a haunting, and finally jerked out. Sakura had laughed so hard when he told them about the similarities--barring the frogs--that Naruto would've worried that she was going to strain something if he hadn't been so annoyed), their relationship had nosedived. It was mostly Sakura's fault; Sasuke was usually less of an asshole to her than Naruto, but recently even the meaningless comments he made were enough to send her tearing into him. She'd actually begun sleeping on the couch two nights ago, and wouldn't come back to bed even after Naruto spent three hours trying to sweet-talk her.

Naruto and Sasuke had always fought, and the farther along they got in the game the fights were starting to get a little more violent, the punches a little less pulled, even though neither of them mentioned it; but it had always been fists and feet with them. Sakura used words and silence, and it made Naruto restless. Bruises went away, but the curve of Sakura's back as she slept facing the couch lingered.

However, Naruto had confusedly blamed it on PMS (and had been starting to think, with no little panic, that he should ask Jiraiya if bitchiness was a typical symptom of pregnancy--he'd assumed that that condom had been torn because it'd snagged on the trashcan, but oh shit what if it had been--), until everything became painfully clear one afternoon.

He had no idea what the fight started over; when he'd come back from work, it had degenerated into a yelling match. Or, Sakura had been yelling, and Sasuke was standing with his arms crossed and sneering in that way that just egged her on more. Naruto had sighed under his breath, thrown his coat on the rack, and then shouted "Shut the fuck UP!"

That immediately turned Sakura on him, of course, but that was fine--Naruto was capable of apologizing. He waved his arms, trying to cut her off before she could get started.

"Sorry, Sakura, sorry, but **damn**, what is it _now?_"

"She's being an idiot again," Sasuke replied.

"Go to hell, you sorry son of a bitch," Sakura snarled.

"Whooooa, okay," Naruto said, stepping between them. "Sasuke, don't be an ass."

"I'm not--"

"You're always being an ass," Naruto told him, not completely without innuendo, because it was better to get Sasuke pissed at him than at her, too--Sasuke had never laid a hand on her yet, but he had no problems hitting girls, and Naruto was slightly afraid of what he would have to do if that ever happened. "Sakura, what _is_ it? This is, like, the eighth fight this week!"

"Why _shouldn't_ I get pissed at him?" she bit off angrily. "It's not like I love him!"

Naruto stared at her.

Sakura went still a moment later, and bit her lip. She pulled back when Naruto made a move to free it before she drew blood.

Behind them, Sasuke was quiet. After a pause, he let his arms drop slightly.

"I know that," he replied carefully. "You don't have to prove it."

"**God**!" Sakura screamed, body curving and tensing with the sound, and then she turned and ran to the bedroom. The sound of the door slamming almost covered the click of the lock.

Naruto turned to stare at Sasuke, but the other man looked unsettled as well.  
-

Sakura didn't come out of the room until after Sasuke loudly announced he was leaving for work. Naruto had thought about sliding a sandwich under the door, because she _had_ to be hungry, but then he decided that if she had to come out to eat, he could finally talk to her.

Naruto's skin prickled when, after she walked out of the hall, he saw the duffel bag in her hand.

Sakura took a wide loop through the living room towards the door, avoiding the table. "I'm going to be at Ino's," she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and speeding up slightly when Naruto stood. "You've got my cell number, so--"

Naruto caught her before she could reach the door handle, wrapped his arms around her elbows and waist and pulled her back.

Sakura lashed out with her feet, kicking him in the shin. "Let me _go!_" she shouted, in a voice suddenly much shriller than before.

Jiraiya hadn't needed the sexual harassment cases he generally inspired to bleed over into his work, so one of the first things he'd beaten into Naruto was that when one of the actresses, or any woman at all, spoke in that tone of voice, he was to back six feet away and protect his eyes and the family jewels. Naruto dragged Sakura another step back from the door, and then sank into a sitting position on the carpet, pulling her with him.

Sakura was shaking, nails digging into his wrists and smelling sourly of fear, and Naruto swore at himself for not noticing things earlier.

"Don't leave," he said quietly, pressing his forehead against her shoulder. "Don't leave like this. Please, Sakura."

Sakura stopped digging her nails into his skin a few moments later, and let her arms drop to her lap. The shaking took longer to subside; it wasn't until Naruto shifted his grip so that her arms were free that she almost relaxed.

"I'm going to Ino's," Sakura repeated, swallowing. "Let go, Naruto. I've already called her."

He tightened his arms instinctively, and then forced himself to loosen them when she tensed again. "Don't leave."

"I'll come back," she replied quietly. "I mean, if I go away for a couple days, this will all seem stupid and I can calm down. _Please_ let me go."

The fear was still there, even if she wasn't shaking; Naruto could almost taste it along the back of his throat and wanted to spit. He let his arms drop to the sides.

Sakura stood up, moved out of arm's reach, and then smoothed down her skirt. She crouched when she picked up the dropped bag, rather than bending, and her goodbye was directed more to the door than him.  
-

Naruto was lying on the carpet, in the same general area, and staring up at the ceiling when Sasuke returned early in the morning.

"She'll come back," Sasuke said, after Naruto told him what had happened.

"She was probably lying to get me to let go," Naruto replied hoarsely. "You didn't smell it."

"She has to come back," Sasuke said, pushing himself up off the floor where he had been sitting next to Naruto. "She couldn't have packed all her stuff in one duffel. We can talk to her when she returns."

Sakura had her own key and knew their schedules, but Sasuke left that part out, so Naruto didn't bother to bring it up either. Sasuke made dinner for himself, showered, and finally toed Naruto in the side and told him to go to bed.  
-

Sakura did come back, two days later, looking just as tired and escorted by Ino.

Ino entered the apartment like some kind of smoky explosion, demanding Naruto hold the door open for them and take Sakura's bag for her and where was that son of a bitch Sasuke and _God_, these _carpets_, Sakura, don't you ever make them _vacuum?_ What was that stai--ew.

Naruto well remembered what had happened the first and last time Sasuke and Ino met, and tried to keep her from heading toward the bedroom; but she barged right past him. Naruto was left to stand awkwardly in the living room with Sakura, who wouldn't quite look at him, and try to think of what to say.

After Ino had banged on the bedroom door for twenty seconds, Sasuke opened it and glared at her. Naruto and Sakura edged closer.

Ino folded her arms over her chest. "You. Apologize to Sakura."

Sakura stepped into the short hallway, holding up a hand. "Look, Ino, you're really not help--"

"Sakura," Sasuke interrupted, rejecting Ino's existence and turning to face her. "I'm sorry for not doing the dishes."

The room was quiet, until Naruto looked at Sakura, and then Sasuke, and disbelievingly mouthed _Dishes?_

". . . ." Sakura bit her lip, and then attempted a half-smile. ". . . It was actually about making lunch."

"I'm sorry for not making lunch," Sasuke replied. "Now shut up and let me sleep."

He shoved the door shut without waiting for a reply. Ino gave it a raised eyebrow, but Sakura caught her elbow and dragged her out of the hall before Sasuke's spate of civility ended.

"Making _lunch?_" Naruto asked, staring.

"I know, I know . . ." Sakura murmured. "It was just . . . a bad. . . . I'm sorry, Naruto. I should have handled that better. I didn't mean to hurt you."

"**You're** not at--" Ino started to say, before Sakura shoved her slightly with the hand still on her arm.

". . . It's okay," Naruto told her quietly. "I. . . ." He hesitated at mentioning Konoha in an outsider's presence, and soon changed it to: "Sasuke probably didn't help anything."

Sakura nodded faintly, absently. Ino looked at her, and then back over their shoulders to the bedroom.

"You shouldn't let him off so easy," she said decisively. "I am **not** believing that this was just over whose turn it was to make dinner."

"It's _okay_, Ino," Sakura said, dropping her hand and looking at her. "Really. He apologized. And he didn't even say anything about you being here."

Ino still looked skeptical. "I told you, it's a sign of a potential abuser to try and cut off contact with friends."

Naruto snorted in surprise. Sakura pressed a thumb to the bridge of her nose.

"He's not an abuser, Ino," she replied in a tone that said they'd gone over this already, more than once. "I don't have to worry. We just live in the apartment, I _told_ you."

"He threw a **chair** at my head, Sakura," Ino replied in the same tone.

"You _did_ try to read his mind without warning," Sakura retorted.

"He's **weird**!" she answered defensively.

None of them had expected Sasuke to react as badly to Ino as he had. Sakura had occasionally wondered if things would have gone better if she'd warned him the friend she was bringing over was a shadowgirl, so he could have left early, or if Ino at least hadn't immediately tried to read his mind to figure him out. Naruto had managed to deflect the majority of the chair so Ino only got a bruise on her forearm, and she and Sakura had then fled the apartment with him yelling at Sasuke and Sasuke yelling right back.

Naruto had called her a few hours later, after Sasuke had left for work and Ino had finally tired herself out from cursing him and every possible family member he had ever or would ever have, and told her that Sasuke really hated shadowgirls and wouldn't tell him why. He promised to make Sasuke sleep on the couch until he made it up to her.

Sakura had started speaking to Sasuke again after nine days, when she'd grew tired of Naruto babbling about anything and everything to fill the silence when all three of them were there. But she always went out to meet Ino or to the other woman's apartment since then.

"That still--" Sakura shook her head. "Look, don't make me have to defend him, okay? Just drop it." When Ino started to reply, Sakura glared at her. "I'm **not **stupid."

"_I can fucking hear you_," Sasuke yelled through the bedroom door.

Ino gave Sakura a significant look. She sighed.

"Shut up!" Naruto yelled back, and then scratched the back of his head. "Hey, I . . . have you eaten breakfast yet?"

"Not much," Sakura replied. "Let's go out to eat. Then Sasuke can sleep." She hooked an arm through Ino's and began pulling the other woman toward the door.

Ino was still arguing with her when Naruto went into the bedroom to get his wallet. Sasuke had curled away from the door with the covers pulled over his head.

Naruto shoved the wallet in his front jeans pocket, watching the lump of blankets. "Sasuke. . . ."

"I am not talking anymore until that shadowbitch is gone," he snarled.

"No, not--. . . thanks," Naruto told him.

Sasuke didn't reply for a moment, and then grunted and yanked the blanket further over his head.

Naruto twisted the bedroom doorknob so that it would shut quietly, locked the outside door, and then jogged down the stairs until he caught up to Sakura and Ino.

—

Sasuke had been leaving for work more and more often recently--Naruto didn't learn how early until one day Sakura commented that he hadn't been home when she got back from work for the past two days. Sasuke wouldn't say anything about it, not even when Naruto pushed to the point that he knew exactly how annoying he was being, which was weird enough to tell him it had to be some really bad shit. And coming at a time when Naruto still wanted to kick the emptied duffel bag half-buried in a corner of the closet, he wasn't willing to let it go.

But Sasuke wouldn't talk about work; and after Naruto convinced Sakura to ask questions as well, he stopped talking at all. Naruto finally quit asking and instead started following him around whenever he was in the apartment, imitating the silence. It was really _hard_, not speaking--he had no idea how Sasuke or Sakura pulled it off--but he managed.

He assumed that it had finally worked when Sasuke showed him the package.

Sasuke let the door swing shut behind him when he came back from the club, just loud enough that it woke up Naruto. Sakura slept through it, but she stirred awake when Naruto jostled the mattress as he slid off the bed.

"You _guys_ . . ." she whined, and pulled the covers back up around her. Naruto patted her hip through the blanket, and chuckled when she drowsily swatted at it from underneath.

Sasuke was sitting at the table, staring at a packet. When Naruto sat down across from him, he flicked it over the table absently, as if he hadn't been so focused on it that he'd started when Naruto opened the bedroom door.

"Do you know what those are?" he asked as he stood up and tugged off the loose sweater he'd been wearing.

Naruto opened the package, and whistled lowly when he saw two yellow feathers. He looked over at Sasuke, who'd dropped the sweater over the back of his chair and now was rummaging through the refrigerator. "Where the hell'd you get these? You didn't kill anyone, right?"

"No," Sasuke replied with annoyance. "Somebody left them at the club."

"Somebody left--" Naruto replied disbelievingly. "These are _yellows!_ **Pure** yellows!" He fished the feathers out of the packet. "Betcha we could pay the next couple months' rent and groceries if we sold them."

Sasuke dumped the ingredients for a sandwich on the counter and pushed the fridge door closed with his foot. "What are they?"

"Yellows," Naruto replied. When Sasuke gave him a 'no shit' look, he shrugged. "I don't deal with these things, okay? I can't tell them apart from sight."

He twisted his hand, turning the feathers. ". . . Maybe Jiraiya would--nah, he'd harass the hell out of me. Maybe Kabuto. . . ."

Sasuke shrugged, busy with the sandwich, and Naruto realized that he hadn't looked at him yet.

"So how'd you really get them?" he asked.

"I told you, someone left them on the limbic splitter," Sasuke said.

"Uh-huh, right," Naruto replied, picking up the packet to push the feathers back in, "and I'm the--hey, it's got writing on it."

"I know," Sasuke replied oddly.

". . . 'This is one way out of your skin, but I don't recommend it,'" Naruto read, and then gave the package a look. "Is that supposed to be a clue or something?"

"Maybe," Sasuke answered, and Naruto hooked the flap closed before setting the packet down.

"What the fuck is up with you?" he asked seriously. "If you stole them, we need to go back and . . . deal with the guy. You know Sakura's been freaked about police since that junkie bastard found us."

"_I didn't steal them_, damn it!" Sasuke snapped. His hands were curled around the edge of the counter. "Someone left them for me!"

Naruto blinked. "What?"

Sasuke didn't reply.

Naruto sat forward on the chair. "What do you mean someone left them for you? These are the--the fucking _gold_ of the Vurt!" He started to scowl. "Are you starting to work for some other dealer? I don't trust any of those--"

"**No**!" Sasuke half-shouted, still glaring down at the counter. "It's not--I don't know who left them there, I just assumed they're for me. No one else would have been working in the booth at the time."

Naruto stared at the tense lines of Sasuke's back under the thin t-shirt he was wearing, and then sat back in his chair.

"Why are you lying to me?" he asked quietly.

The muscles in Sasuke's arms flexed sharply, and his hands clenched around the counter before he shoved away. He stormed into the bathroom without speaking, and locked the door before Naruto could reach it.

The noise had woken Sakura up completely--she was halfway out of the bed when Naruto came back in and shoved the package onto the dresser, underneath his wallet and watch.

"You should give up," she said, dropping back onto the mattress. "If he doesn't want to talk, he's not going to."

"Yeah, I guess," Naruto mumbled as he crawled back next to her.

Sakura frowned, and then propped herself up on an elbow. "What happened?"

". . . Nothing," he said. "I'm just getting tired of all this stuff recently."

Sakura started to say something, and then closed her lips again. Instead, she leaned back onto the mattress, before curling up closer to Naruto until she could tuck her head under his chin. She slipped her arm beneath his a moment later, and began to scratch the back of his neck gently.  
-

Sakura had fallen asleep again by the time Sasuke got out of the shower and came into the bedroom to pull on a clean pair of boxers. Naruto reached back and flipped down the covers on his side without saying anything.

For several seconds, he thought that Sasuke was going to ignore him and go sleep on the couch. But then there was the familiar dip and shift of the mattress, and Naruto felt his chest untighten slightly. Sakura mumbled and rolled over; Naruto lifted his arm to give her the room and draped it back over her waist when she'd settled. He checked that she really was asleep before saying quietly, "I can take those with me and show them to Kabuto the next time he comes around. That guy's another feather maker."

"Sell them to him," Sasuke replied, the echo of his voice telling Naruto that he was sleeping facing away. "I don't care. Get them out of here."

"Okay," he replied, and let it stay there.  
-

He would regret dropping the subject later, but at that moment the bed had felt weighted down the way it was supposed to, and Sakura was warm against him and he could hear how Sasuke's shallow breaths soon deepened into unfeigned sleep, and Naruto figured he could wait a little for the real answers.


	9. game 9

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. Vurt belongs Jeff Noon.

Vurt Ninjas 9: In which Kabuto is on who knows what side, and I make up more stuff about the feathers than I can ever justify.  
—————

-

Naruto had been taking the packet of yellows to work for three days before Kabuto came by again.

He heard the outer door open, and half a minute later a voice called, "Hey, Naruto," as it passed.

Naruto fumbled with the dream snake. "Oh, hey! Kabuto!"

"Yeah?" the man answered, coming back and looking around the doorway.

"Hey, I need to talk--dammit! get in, you piece of--talk to you about something."

Kabuto waited while Naruto forced the snake back into its cage and halted the dreamsmoke, leaning against the door frame.

Naruto went over to the table shoved up against the wall beside the door and fished inside the jacket thrown over it for the package. "Can you tell me what these are?"

Kabuto set the padded bundle of sucker feathers that he'd been delivering on the less-messy part of the table and took the packet. A moment after opening it, he let out a low whistle.

"How'd you _get_ these?" Kabuto asked appreciatively.

"Found them. . . . Really long story. . . ." Naruto muttered, before asking, "What's the selling rate for them?"

"There is no selling rate for yellows," Kabuto answered absently, holding one of the feathers up to the light with care. "These are _rare_--Cholinesterases."

"Shwhu?" Naruto replied.

"The game's called Cholinesterase," Kabuto replied, letting his arm drop slightly and looking over at him. "It's named after a chemical in venom. They were supposedly made by a real Game Cat--they're **impossible** to find."

Naruto looked away from the raised eyebrow Kabuto was giving him. "Yeah, so, do you think you could sell them for me?"

"I can't pay you a fraction what these are worth," Kabuto replied. "But if you'll give them to me, I'll get you three lovelies by next week."

"Three lo--three _thousand_ punies?" Naruto replied. "Fuck, sure, take 'em!"

Kabuto chuckled, and gently tucked the yellow back into the packet. "How hot are they?"

"Er."

Kabuto gave him a congenial look. "I appreciate this, Naruto, but I don't want them badly enough to get shot on my way back to the car."

"I don't think they're **that** bad. I've been carrying them around for the last couple of days--" he scratched the back of his neck at the look on Kabuto's face "--and nobody's jumped me. I don't know anything about it before they came to me."

Naruto was already thinking of what to say when Kabuto questioned him further, because he couldn't tell the truth--he didn't want to implicate Sasuke in anything, didn't want Sasuke's name involved at all--but Kabuto didn't question further. He just nodded and slipped the feathers into the inner pocket of his jacket.

"Is Mr. Jiraiya in?" Kabuto asked.

"Yeah, in the filming studio . . . there was one other thing I wanted to ask."

"Mm?" Kabuto said, glancing back over his shoulder from where he'd already turned toward the door.

Naruto scratched a forearm, then absently wondered if he'd picked up fleas anywhere. "Is there any way I can talk to the guy that makes Konoha?"

A grin slipped onto Kabuto's face. "You are."

Naruto blinked, and then stared.

"No _way!_ Really?"

Kabuto glanced downward, grinning a little sheepishly. "Well, it's not all my idea; I was contacted by a Game Cat. But most of the technical work is mine, and I got to design some of the non-player characters."

Despite the modest expression, he sounded proud. Naruto grinned. "That's awesome!"

"Thanks," Kabuto said, looking back up with a smile before beginning to frown. "Did you have a problem with the latest feather or something?"

"Uh, no, not. . . ." Naruto shifted, then leaned against the chair in front of the desk. "How did you design it? I'm not trying to steal anything, I was just wondering. 'Cause some of the characters are a lot like people we know in real life--it's cool, but it's still freaky."

"Ahh," Kabuto said, turning all the way around again and leaning against the frame once more. He nodded. "I designed it like that. The non-player characters have general personalities, but if they're similar to someone a player knows in real life, then they'll imprint those traits; but others have nonprintable personalities. Like--how far in are you?"

Naruto had both eyebrows raised, and noted to himself that Kabuto was a hell of a better operator than he'd first thought. "We're looking for that Tsunade chick right now. Sak--the guys I'm playing it with say they're bored because their characters aren't doing anything and they just have to watch mine's actions."

"Aheh," Kabuto chuckled, adjusting his glasses. "Yeah, I got a little too focused on one storyline and didn't prepare enough for multiple players. . . ." He looked back at Naruto, grinning. "But, that means you've learned that I'm a traitor?"

Naruto began to think he should just keep an eyebrow up. "You sound . . . proud."

"Are you kidding?" Kabuto replied. "It took me months to fine-tune that guy. He's probably my best work. He's one of the examples of a nonprintable character."

"Ahh . . ." Naruto replied. "Okay."

The corner of Kabuto's mouth curved up a little bit. "I know. The Game Cat called me narcissistic when I showed him the designs," he admitted. Naruto snickered.

A moment later, Naruto swung the chair around and sat down, folding his arms absently over the back. "All right," Naruto said. "Thanks. That--yeah, that makes it less creepy."

Kabuto gave him another little grin, then picked up his packet of sucker feathers. "You're welcome. I'll get the lovelies to you by the time I come back; if I have to, I can trade them to the Game Cat for the money."

Naruto nodded, even as he was muttering, "'Game Cat,' 'Game Cat,' sheesh. It always annoys me how those guys think they're too good for a name."

"Oh, no," Kabuto said, glancing over his shoulder as he headed out the door. "He calls himself Orochimaru."


	10. game 10

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. Vurt belongs to Jeff Noon.

Vurt Ninjas 10: In which nothing waits for the handbasket to go to hell.  
—————

-

When Sakura returned to the apartment after work, she found Naruto and Sasuke trying to kill each other.

Once Naruto had gotten past the deep freeze that Kabuto's words had sent him into, he'd thrown himself out of the chair and torn down the hall after him. He'd wound up crashing the both of them into the studio door when he'd half-tackled the guy, which had opened and spilled them into the room, disrupting Jiraiya's filming and freaking out the actress.

Kabuto--after Naruto had let go of his shirt collar and let him stand up--had said that he'd only borrowed the name; all three of the sannin were imprintable characters.

Jiraiya had found that one of the silver feathers Kabuto was carrying had snapped and tossed Naruto out of the building at that point. He broke more than a few speed limits on his way back to the apartment, then dragged Sasuke out of bed and punched him in the stomach. The fight had moved into the hall before Sasuke'd woken up enough to make sense of what Naruto was yelling at him--and that's when the furniture started getting damaged.

Sakura shrieked and shielded herself behind the door when Naruto was thrown back-first against the wall beside it. When he shoved himself away and at Sasuke again, who was waiting in a defensive position, Sakura darted inside, slammed the door shut, and then ran for the relative safety of the kitchen. The kitchen attached directly to the living room, but the table was solid enough to be a decent barrier between them and her.

"**God**, you guys--" and then she noticed that Sasuke was bleeding badly from his left collarbone. With his back to her, it was obvious that it was a bite.

Sakura stared, then shivered once and slipped her purse off her shoulder.

"Hey, Naruto! Sasuke, guys! **HEY**!" When they continued to ignore her and Sasuke tried to kick Naruto in the side of the knee, only to get his leg grabbed and flung up, Sakura threw her purse over their heads.

It bounced off the blinds, making a loud crash and thankfully not breaking the glass. Naruto pulled away, slightly, but didn't look at her. Sasuke flipped himself back up onto his feet, watching Naruto.

"What the **_hell_**, you guys!" Sakura demanded.

"Why don't you ask _Sasuke?_" Naruto replied, snarling and drawling out the words with a kind of sarcasm that Sakura had never heard him use before.

"Shut the fuck up," Sasuke said, as tersely as was possible while panting.

"What are you gonna do about it, _kittling?_"

Sasuke's lips thinned, and then he swung a leg at Naruto's knee again. When Naruto caught it, Sasuke threw himself into the twist, balancing on his hands, and kicked him in the side of the head. Naruto let go as he crashed backward. Sakura cringed away.

She wasn't an expert on fighting techniques, but she was an expert on anatomy. And while Naruto was just punching what he could reach, Sasuke was going for all the body's most vulnerable areas: the temple, the nose, the side of the knee.

Sakura curled her hands around the back of the chair nearest to her. "_**Guys**!_" she half-screamed, and watched as they ignored her again.

When Naruto was close enough to Sasuke that he'd managed to force the other man to his knees on the floor, even though it left him near enough that Sasuke could get a good strike in on the tender area below his ribs, Sakura tried not to think too much about what she was doing. And then she swung the chair around and slammed it as hard as she could into their shoulders.

One of the legs cracked, and the both of them crashed to the floor.

Naruto got back on his feet first, glaring at her. Sakura backed a few steps away, brandishing the chair between them, and then held it between her and Sasuke when he picked himself back up, because if she had to choose she trusted Sasuke less than Naruto.

Sasuke just stared at her, coughing slightly on the blood he'd swallowed from his split lip. Sakura shifted the chair back between her and Naruto, because at least Sasuke wasn't crouching slightly like he was going to jump.

No one spoke.

When the only sound for several long seconds was the ticking of Sakura's wristwatch, she swallowed and said, "_Quit_ it, guys. Naruto, Sasuke--you're _scaring_ me."

Naruto wavered slightly, almost straightening again. Sakura took a risk and removed the volatile element: "Sasuke," she said in the most matter-of-fact voice she could manage, "go wash that off before it gets infected."

Sasuke half-lifted a hand to his bleeding shoulder, then sneered and dropped it. He backed his way to the hall and the bathroom, not letting Naruto out of his sight.

A few seconds after the door closed, Naruto sat down on the carpet. Sakura set the chair back on the floor, then pushed it down a little. The leg cracked ominously, so she sat down on a different one.

". . . It wasn't--" he began.

"I don't _care_," Sakura replied tiredly, shrugging out of her light jacket. Naruto looked down at the ground.

A moment later, Sakura pushed her sleeves up over her elbows as well; her heart had been beating fast enough that the whole room felt too hot. She pressed a hand against her forehead, staring at the table, before looking over at Naruto.

"Can you bring me my purse?" she asked quietly.

When he held it out to her, she ignored it and caught his chin instead, tilting his head to get a better view of the area Sasuke had kicked. It was already giving indications that it would bruise, so Sakura sighed and took the purse.

"Here, kneel," she told him, as she opened it and fished around for the small flashlight she carried.  
-

After she'd checked that he didn't have a concussion, Sakura knocked on the bathroom door until Sasuke let her in and let her tape the bandage on properly. He went back to the bedroom without answering her questions or speaking, however, so she gave up on him and returned to the living room.

Naruto was lying on the couch, holding a baggie of ice against his temple and grimacing slightly. Sakura sat by his feet and tried not to feel sorry for him.

"What **happened**?" she asked, keeping her voice low enough that Sasuke wouldn't hear it.

Naruto started to answer, and then stopped and shook his head. Sakura couldn't get any more than that out of him; and less than fifteen minutes later, Sasuke came out of the bedroom, which cut her off in the middle of trying.

Sasuke stalked through the living room, favoring the leg that Naruto had twisted, and was almost at the front door before Naruto had rolled off the couch and stood up. Sakura grabbed his wrist, but he yanked free.

"Hey! Sasuke, don't--"

Sasuke threw the door open and didn't bother to shut it as he stormed out. Naruto took off after him.

"Don't jump the--_dammit!_"

Sakura had followed them; she leaned out over the platform railing, but Sasuke was already on the second floor flight and Naruto had reached the third.

Sakura pressed her hands to her face, shoved her hair back, and then went back into the apartment and kicked the door shut.

There were bloodstains on the carpet, she noticed, as she crossed over to the table. She hoped Sasuke really had washed off that bite--they didn't clean often enough for him to be okay getting it rubbed against the ground.

She'd fished out her cell phone and already hit Ino's number before the irritation and urge to cut the call off set in. Sakura tried to ignore it long enough for Ino to pick up, so she could focus on the subtle differences between the way the person and the Vurt character spoke.

There was a click, and then: "Hey, Sakura," Ino said. Her voice was slightly distant, distracted, like she was trying to do something else at the same time. "What's up?"

"I. . . ." She fiddled with the clasp of her purse.

There was a long pause, and when Ino spoke again, her voice was clearer. "Sakura? What's wrong?"

Sakura sat down in the uncracked chair. ". . . how do you get blood out of carpet?" she asked quietly. "I always made the guys do it before."  
-

When Ino reached the apartment twenty minutes later, as fast as she could in traffic, it didn't look as bad as she'd imagined. Sakura had fixed the blinds again, shoved the couch back into place, picked up and straightened the coat rack, and poured baking soda on the bloodstains. She'd looked through the cabinets for wood glue, but on finding none, had just pulled the damaged chair away from the table.

There was something about the room, though, and the tired, slightly sick expression Sakura was trying to hide that made Ino put her hands on her hips. "Let's go."

"Huh? --No, Ino, I'm not leav--"

"We're going to get dinner," Ino replied. "You haven't eaten since you got off work, have you? You called too soon."

"I . . . yeah. Okay. Thanks."  
-

There was a small deli several streets down from the strip club where Ino worked, and not too far from Sakura's apartment; since she only had about an hour before she had to go in, she took the other woman there.

Sakura hadn't said anything in the car, just stared out the window, so Ino turned up the radio and sang along and yelled at the other drivers regardless of who was in the wrong. She was willing to hold off questions until Sakura had smiled at least twice and had something to eat.

"Augh, here again?" Sakura said, after they'd stolen someone's parking space and were coming up the sidewalk to the place. "They're always so slow after they changed ownership."

"But cheap!" Ino replied cheerily. She glanced over. "You said you'd quit selling for a while, didn't you? How are you going to get back into medical school if you don't save?"

Sakura exhaled, glancing up at the sky, before pulling the door open. Ino gave her an 'I win' look as she passed.

The deli was half-full, though it was close to closing; the teenager behind the counter looked like he was wishing very unpleasant things upon them for coming in.

Sakura glanced at the menu along the wall, and Ino leaned against the counter. "I want a baked sweet potato," she told him. "Butter and brown sugar."

"Ooh, me too," Sakura added. "No butter, please."

"We're out of sweet potatoes," the teenager replied.

Ino waved a hand negligently. "Same as usual. Go ahead and microwave them; we'll wait."

"No, we're totally out of sweet potatoes," he deadpanned. "There was a potato blight. There's probably no more sweet potatoes in the whole city."

"Ichiro, _quit that!_" a woman yelled from the kitchen.

The teenager rolled his eyes and looked at them again.

". . . I'll have a salad," Sakura said.

"I'll have a sweet potato," Ino added with a bright grin. "Butter and brown sugar."

He returned her smile with a touch more viciousness and went into the kitchen.

"He's going to burn it," Sakura warned her, after they'd paid and settled at a table to wait.

"Then I'll send it back and make him do it right," she replied.

Sakura rolled her eyes. "You shouldn't torture the servers, Ino."

"Hey, I'm going to have to go put up with a bunch of horny assholes after this," Ino retorted. "I have to have a little fun _somehow_."

"Have. . . ." Sakura rested her forehead on a palm. "You're going to turn into a man-hater if you keep this job any longer. And then since Shikamaru's a misogynist, you two will have the worst relationship _ever_."

"Psh," Ino replied, "we already do," and picked up Sakura's cup before going to get their drinks.  
-

Sakura had fallen into moody silence again in all of the thirty seconds Ino took to fill the cups. It would have been frustrating, if she hadn't been worried.

After four minutes, though, when Sakura had done nothing but push her salad around on the plate, it became frustrated worry.

"Okay," Ino said, wiping her lips and dropping the napkin on her plate before folding her hands and resting her chin on them, "spill. **Now**."

"It's. . . ." Sakura shook her head. "I'm just . . . tired. They keep fighting more and more, and if it's not one thing it's another."

"You know you're welcome at our apartment," Ino replied. "Maybe you should just leave again for a while."

Sakura shook her head tightly, before pressing her fingers to her temples. "I _can't_ leave. I'll come back and Sasuke will have really hurt him, I know it. Naruto says he's been regressing."

She frowned. "Regressing?"

Sakura pressed her fingers harder against her skin, closing her eyes. "He used to be really violent. Naruto says he's calmed down a lot since they got together."

Ino snorted disbelievingly, and then blinked in confused surprise when Sakura flashed her an angry look. The other woman looked back down at the table before Ino was certain she saw it, though.

"Naruto's been worse, too," Sakura added a moment later, after the uncomfortable pause. Her voice cracked as she went on. "They _won't stop fighting_, Ino. It's never been like this before. They were always fighting, but that was wrestling, and now. . . . Something's going wrong and I know why but I don't know how to make it _stop_ and they're not help--!"

Sakura realized she was starting to cry, let out a frustrated half-scream, and then ground the heels of her hands against her eyes with a brutality that made Ino start.

"Sakura!" she exclaimed, leaning over the table and pulling the other woman's hands away.

"I'm not crying!" she snapped. "I'm not--dammit, I will **not** be like that stupid little worthless girl!"

"O . . . kay," Ino murmured. "All right, Sakura, we're going to leave the crowded restaurant now, come on. . . ."

Sakura slid out of her chair when Ino tugged on her wrist again, but she was pressing her free hand against an eye again. Ino snatched a stack of napkins off a table as they passed, the man sitting there letting it go with a half-hearted and slightly embarrassed "Hey."

When they reached the car again, Sakura slumped against it once Ino let go of her wrist. She sunk to the ground a second later, so Ino quit trying to unlock the door and sat down next to her.

"I'm _scared_," Sakura whispered. "I don't like going home anymore. I'm scared that Sasuke's going to hit me." Ino tensed at that, but Sakura didn't notice. "I'm afraid to have sex with Naruto anymore. I'm--" She twisted around enough to press her face against Ino's shoulder. "It's that stupid game, that goddamn _fucking_ game's fault, but I'm afraid of losing him. I'm so sick of everything. I want them to stop fighting and I want to stop being scared but I don't know how to **fix** it! I don't know what to _**do**!_"

Sakura fell silent after that, then hiccupped once and finally took the napkins from Ino's hand. She pressed the whole wad against her eyes, and let out another shuddering breath.

Ino had been absently stroking her hair for the last minute, and glaring at the couple who'd walked past them until they finally looked away. When Sakura finally quit trembling so much, Ino asked quietly, "What game?"

Sakura tensed up at that, started to say something, and then stopped and shook her head sharply.

Ino exhaled, and kept stroking Sakura's hair. After a few seconds, she began brushing it away from the other woman's temple.

"You don't have to say it," she murmured encouragingly. "Just let me read it. Okay?"

Sakura didn't reply at first; but finally, after half a minute, she pressed her forehead harder against Ino's shoulder and nodded once.  
-

When Ino was finished reading everything Sakura thought and remembered about Konoha, she wasn't sure what to say--not for a lack of things that needed to be said, but because she didn't know where to start. 'Jesus fucking **Christ**, girl!' seemed tactless.

Then again, this was Ino.

"Jesus," she finally muttered, letting her arm drop around Sakura's shoulders. "And _you_ were the one who was always 'I can't play because I'm grounded, Ino,' 'I'm not going to skip class for the mall, Ino,' 'I don't think you should run away from home, Ino,' 'I'm not going to get that tattoo, Ino.' And now you've shacked up with a half-dog and a freak of nature and gotten into _this_." She blew her bangs out of her face and gave Sakura a knowing look. "This is what happens when you don't have fun as a kid. It comes back to haunt you."

Sakura snorted once, then chuckled breathily a couple times. Ino hugged her shoulders.

Sakura finally pulled away a little after that, and began wiping off her face with the napkins that weren't already damp. Ino pulled her legs up to her chest and folded her arms on her knees, watching her.

"That's why you haven't been calling me lately?" she asked.

Sakura hesitated again, and nodded. "Yeah. I . . . sorry."

"Why don't you just refuse to play again?" Ino suggested. "Naruto, that guy's not the type to face rape, right? And I'll kill Sasuke if he tries. Promise. Shikamaru can get me out without bail."

Sakura snorted again, but this time it was tired. "Because . . . that game, it's. . . . You _saw_ we tried."

Ino frowned, looking at Sakura staring at the napkins in her hands. "So why don't you stop buying them? You can't play what's not there."

Sakura made a small 'it's out of my control' gesture with her head and shoulders. "Naruto's the one who buys them, from some guy he works with."

"Then make him **stop**."

"It's not that easy."

Ino exhaled heavily. "Have you talked to the guy he's buying them from? Asked him to stop selling them? If you claim you're going to be broke and begging from a homeless hole soon--"

"--He won't care, as long as Naruto can keep giving him money," Sakura interrupted. "These are feather makers."

"I could loan you one of my shirts when you go?" Ino offered. Sakura gave her a look. She just raised an eyebrow and tilted her head slightly.

Sakura huffed and looked back at the blacktop. A few moments after that, she glanced up at the sky. "What time is it?"

Ino rolled her eyes. "Don't change the subject."

"You're going to be late, aren't you?" Sakura pointed out, wadding the napkins together and then throwing them underneath the car next to them.

She shrugged. "I don't think I'm on until the second set, anyway."

"Sorry. . . ."

"Whatever," Ino replied. "If they're stupid enough to fire me, I'll just go work somewhere else." She stood up, brushing off the back of her skirt with one hand and holding out the other to Sakura. "Do you want to come with me?"

Sakura pushed herself up and let go of Ino wrist. "No, I . . . I should go back, I'm tired. And wouldn't it be weird for me to be there?"

"You could just hang out in the back until I'm done," Ino replied, fishing the keys out of her coat pocket. "Are you sure you should head back, after that?"

"Yeah," Sakura said. "Yeah. They've probably beaten the hell out of each other now, and if I don't make Naruto disinfect his wounds, he just licks them and goes on to whatever else he was--no, Ino, I can walk; you're late enough," she said, when the other woman started unlocking the door on her side.

"I'm driving you home," Ino replied, "and if you don't like it you can complain on the way. Now get in."

Sakura made an exasperated noise, but opened the door gratefully.


	11. game 11

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. Vurt belongs to Jeff Noon.

Many, many bonus points to you if you know where Orochimaru's original name is from.

Vurt Ninjas 11: In which Orochimaru, Tsunade, and Jiraiya are not very much like their sannin selves.  
——————

-

No one was there yet when Ino dropped her off. The other woman had come up with her, leaving her car illegally parked beside the front doors of the building, and then complained about the two jerks not even having the decency to be present so she could yell at them. Sakura pushed her out the door and told her to drive sane on her way to work; Ino just waved cheerily from the stairs.

Sakura drank two glasses of water before she tried Naruto and Sasuke's cell phones. Neither of them picked up (Sasuke's cut off in the middle of a ring, which prompted Sakura to make several vulgar comments about his parentage and sexual deviancies) (the irony didn't escape her), so after another hour, she finally made dinner, showered and went to bed. She didn't work the next day, so she didn't set the alarm.  
-

The phone woke her up, at a little past ten in the morning. When she pushed back the covers, she realized no one else was in the bed. When she went into the kitchen to pick up the phone, she found no one was on the couch, either.

Sakura's growing sense of unease was not helped by the fact that as soon as she picked up the phone, she heard: "Where the hell _are_ you, bastard? If you're not dying, get your ass down here! We have to have this batch finished by the end of the week! And I'm **not** paying you overtime for this!"

"Excuse me?"

"Oh, my apologies," Jiraiya said in a completely different tone of voice. "Is Naruto there, miss?"

". . . He." Sakura reached out and pulled one of the chairs over, and sat down heavily. "He's not there?"  
-

Jiraiya rather legitimately prided himself on his skill with women. He managed to talk Sakura into a breakdown, and then talk her back out of it so he could actually understand what she was saying.

When he realized that she _had_ used the name he'd tried to tell himself she hadn't used, he interrupted.

"Ms. Sakura--you don't mind if I call you that, right?--would you like to come down here and tell me the rest of this?" he asked, and went on before she could reply. "He might be trying to call you."

"Oh! . . . Oh, I've got my cell phone, though--"

"But if he calls the house and you're not answering instead of on the line, he might be more likely to call the cell."

". . . Maybe. . . ."

"And if he just shows up here," Jiraiya continued, "you can get a hold of him then." He reached for a small black book. "Don't permanently damage anything," he added. "I can't train a new assistant in time to make this shipment."

Sakura chuckled faintly, and then hesitated and asked for the address.  
-

Once she'd hung up, Jiraiya immediately called Tsunade.

He got the answering machine, so he tried again. After the third time and nothing changed, he crossly informed her that it was rude to screen her calls, hung up again, and looked up Shizune's number.

Shizune was the only person on God's green earth that Jiraiya knew of who could get a hold of Tsunade no matter what. Since he had never gone to college, he simply assumed that that was one of the things that developed when a TA borrowed gambling money from a student who always loaned it and never mentioned it to the authorities, even though he wasn't sure _how_ guilt could overpower a hangover.

Shizune was reluctant to call, having learned that Jiraiya had already tried several times; but Jiraiya never went through her unless he really needed the help, so she asked him to hang up and wait about ten minutes.

Tsunade called him nine minutes later, cursing his manhood quite creatively, he had to admit.

"Tsunade," he interrupted, when she took a breath. "How soon can you get here?"

"What?"

Jiraiya smiled thinly. "We need to discuss how much in royalties we're going to demand from Yashagoro for using our names in his latest kittling's game."

In the long pause following that, he could hear the bedsprings creak as she sat up.

"If you're joking . . ." she whispered.

"Would I?" he asked.

". . . Thirty minutes," Tsunade said roughly.

"Thanks," Jiraiya replied, and hung up.

—

Sakura got lost among the warehouses while looking for Jiraiya's workshop, so she'd only been there a few minutes before Tsunade's arrival. Jiraiya killed the time by offering her a soda and saying he had to check whether the feathers had dried, he'd be with her in a moment, and if Naruto called while he was out she was free to say whatever she wanted to the pup.

He knew when Tsunade entered, because her method of kicking doors open had a distinctive ring to it. He met her in the hall a ways from the office.

"What the fuck has Yasha--"

"Orochimaru," Jiraiya corrected, gesturing over his shoulder with a thumb. "I'll let her tell you."

Sakura started when he and Tsunade entered the room, and stared for a few seconds past that. Jiraiya introduced her more from habit that necessity. "This is Tsunade," he said, gesturing to the woman, "an old friend of mine. Would you mind repeating some of what you told me on the phone, before telling me the rest?"  
-

Sakura was in the middle of describing the chuunin exam finals when her cell phone rang. She started to reach for it, then hesitated; Jiraiya gestured for Tsunade to follow him out.

Tsunade pressed her hands to her forehead once the office door was half-closed and a few feet behind them. "_Fuck_," she spat. "You _bastards_ . . . you told me all those feathers were destroyed!"

"They were," Jiraiya replied, folding his arms. "I did the last few myself. He just remembered the process . . . and this one's different. The main personalities have changed, and it's longer, more intricate . . . Kabuto must have--"

"You _son of a bitch!_" Sakura screamed from inside the office. "Son of a _bitch and a **mongrel**!_ If you ever--put Sasuke on the phone!"

They missed whatever Naruto said in reply, but it was apparently something to the effect of Sasuke wouldn't touch the phone with a ten-foot pole, because Sakura soon yelled "Then _throw_ the phone at him!"

"Pup's got good taste in women," Jiraiya said approvingly. Tsunade gave him a disbelieving look.  
-

Jiraiya went in and carefully wrested the cell phone from Sakura a minute later, when her voice was starting to get hoarse, and suggested Naruto come to work like he should have down hours ago and pick her up. And then break his ass working on this shipment--Jiraiya hoped he'd gotten plenty of sleep last night.

He didn't mention Tsunade, and let the thought of Sakura in his less than respectable presence motivate him to get there faster. Sakura looked pissed off when Jiraiya handed back the phone and she found Naruto had already hung up.  
-

Sakura had described up to the arrival of Tsunade in Konoha, as far as the three of them had gotten in the game, when Naruto arrived twenty-eight minutes later. She described the fight between Jiraiya, Tsunade, and Orochimaru awkwardly, from the detached point of view she'd been in due to the lack of her character's presence; but they recognized the design the three of them had invented almost thirty years ago. The fight had been programmed for them alone--none of the other people they'd sold the feather to had been given the code to access it.

Certain details had been changed and added, however. Hearing about them made Tsunade clench her fists in her lap, and made Jiraiya shift his chair so that if she lost control, she'd take out the furniture rather than the messenger. He could replace the desk; he couldn't replace Naruto if Tsunade broke his jaw while he was trying to go for her throat for hurting his girlfriend.

Naruto was wearing the same clothes as yesterday and rather a few more bruises along what they could see of his arms, as well as a black eye. He froze in the doorway when he spotted Tsunade and said "_Jesus-Dog_," which was a rare lapse into slang for him. Tsunade gave him an impassive look.

"What the hell is going on?" Naruto demanded.  
-

Jiraiya sat behind the desk as he explained about the yellow feather that he and Orochimaru had designed decades ago. He fidgeted with a pen most of the time; he didn't like discussing it with Tsunade in the room, because she really never had been the same after her boyfriend died playing it. No one had survived the game besides the three of them, but Dan was the only one Jiraiya still sometimes lost sleep over.

"So, Orochimaru . . ." Sakura said quietly. "He's really real?"

"A Game Cat," Naruto said, from where he was crouched beside the chair she was sitting in, staring at Jiraiya with harsh eyes. "And Kabuto works with him. Right?"

"Yes," Jiraiya replied. "He's been studying under Orochimaru for about as long as I've hired him."

Sakura looked between the two of them. "But, Kabuto's--I mean, in the game, he's. . . ."

"You told me the stuff I bought from him was safe," Naruto said, and didn't try to keep the betrayal out of his voice.

"They should have been safe," Jiraiya replied harshly, even as he knew he wasn't being fair. "If you did something to attract the attention of a Game Cat, pup, it's not my business to keep up with."

Naruto and Sakura exchanged a look that Tsunade and Jiraiya couldn't interpret.

Naruto stood up a few moments later. "I'm taking Sakura home," he growled. "I'll be back to work after that."

"Fine," Jiraiya said.  
-

Tsunade shoved the door closed with a foot when Naruto and Sakura left. "So that's what a dog that's fighting its master looks like."

"No," he answered, shoving his long ponytail back over his shoulder. "He changed masters a while ago."

Tsunade shrugged a shoulder, not really caring. Her voice was thick with restrained anger when next she said: "Tell Yashagoro that if I ever see him again, I'm ripping off his balls."

Jiraiya pursed his lips in a quasi-smile, but there was no humor in it.

—

Sasuke was waiting in the car, a block from the warehouse. He was slouched down deep in the driver's seat, so all they could really make out was the top of his head. He unlocked the doors when he heard them approach. Sakura opened the backseat one and slid in, with Naruto following. Sasuke didn't start the car. None of them spoke.

Finally, Naruto stretched his arms gingerly over his head and stared up at the ceiling. "Fuck."

"What?" Sasuke replied. His voice sounded hoarse--Sakura wished she were on the side the rearview mirror was tilted towards, so she could get an idea of his injuries as well.

"Is that what you two were fighting over?" she asked, keeping her voice even. "Orochimaru?"

Sasuke's shoulders tensed, and then he grimaced and forcefully relaxed them.

Naruto wouldn't answer, so she waited a few more seconds and then said, "Sasuke?"

"Yes," he replied in annoyance. "What did they say?"

"Nothing you don't already know," Naruto replied harshly, and Sakura punched him under the ribs.

He yelped and gave her a startled look. "Hey!"

"You--you--goddamn **assholes**!" Sakura snarled. "What did you know! How long? And _why didn't you tell me?_"

"Because I didn't tell him anything," Sasuke said flatly, not turning around to look at either of them. "Not enough to be worth telling you."

Sakura hesitated at that, and then folded her arms against her chest and pulled up her legs.

Naruto stopped rubbing his side when she started curling in on herself, and sighed. "I knew about the feathers," he admitted, "these yellow feathers that he got. But I didn't put it together until I talked to Kabuto yesterday. I didn't tell you about them because . . . I didn't want to, you know. Scare you."

". . . Ass," Sakura said quietly, tucking her chin into her arms a little.

"Sorry," Naruto answered. "I thought we could just--I didn't know why they--man, _why?_" he asked, this time directed at Sasuke.

"You read that writing," he replied tensely.

"The--what, that crap about getting out of your skin? What the hell does that--?"

"Why did I have to wait out **here**, genius!"

Naruto fell silent at that.

Sakura looked between the two of them, then shifted on the seat and finally asked, "Why?"

"'He,'" Sasuke said, working the gear shift agitatedly. "Every time Naruto talked about me to that man, he said 'he.' So how am I supposed to walk in there like _this?_"

The shadows shifted with each small, sharp motion of his hand. Sakura bit her lip and looked down.

"That's a stupid reason," Naruto muttered, glaring out the window over her shoulder. "I like you like this."

"You're not the fucking world," Sasuke replied.

". . . let's go home," Sakura said. "I'm thirsty."

"Yeah," Naruto replied quietly, hunching down in the seat and propping his feet on the back of the driver's chair.

Sasuke finally decided he'd calmed down enough to drive sanely, and started the car. "Don't get my seats dirty."

". . . We've had _sex_ back here," Naruto said disbelievingly, "and you're complaining about footprints?"

"Yes," Sasuke replied.

Naruto rolled his eyes and deliberately set his feet higher on the back of the seat, until Sakura thwapped him on the upper thigh.


	12. game 12

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. Vurt belongs to Jeff Noon.

I like to think the song playing on the radio is "Sympathy for the Devil," but that's just me.

Vurt Ninjas 12: In which it is all. about. Sasuke. Just in case you forgot.  
—————

-

_Their parents had been cremated two days ago; arranging for the funeral had taken three._

_Sasuke had tried to run away the first night, but had been caught by one of the 'concerned friends' of Itachi that he'd spotted around their house and been brought back. He hadn't eaten anything in the house in the last five days--when Itachi put the food on the table and began to eat, Sasuke stared at it until his half-brother finished his own and left again. The only water he'd drunk was handfuls straight from one of the shower heads, because he thought it would be harder to put some kind of poison in the shower pipes than in the sink ones. He'd been buying food from vending machines on the way to school, but yesterday Itachi had cleared all the change out of the house, and Sasuke hadn't been able to find any money anywhere._

_One of the girls in his class had given him some of her lunch when his stomach had growled all through the first half of the day and he said he'd forgotten his at home, but it had been a long time between then and now. He stared at the full plate in front of him, hands clenched into fists in his lap underneath the table. Itachi's was already half empty._

_Itachi finished his tea, then set the glass down and stared at Sasuke across the table._

_"You can't read thoughts," he said quietly, the first time he'd spoken to Sasuke since the last relative had left the house after the funeral. Sasuke tensed, and didn't look up from the plate._

_"You can't manipulate others' shadows," Itachi continued, watching him. "You have to cross-dress to be seen in public. You're a burden to me without having any benefits. What good are you?"_

_Sasuke tried to think of something--_anything_--that his brother considered of value. He clenched his fists tighter, and then hissed when he broke the skin of his palm._

_The clock in the kitchen ticked off seconds that slowly turned to minutes, and finally Sasuke said, "I can keep my mouth shut."_

_Itachi stared at him for a while, and then chuckled once. Sasuke didn't dare look up._

_He jumped when Itachi pushed his own half-finished plate over to Sasuke's side. The teenager stood, cleared away Sasuke's dish and glass, and then took them to the kitchen._

_Itachi came back a few moments later, with a new glass of soda. He set it at Sasuke's elbow, and then sat back down in his chair. Sasuke had been tearing through the food, but hesitated at the soda; he looked up at Itachi, at a point just below the teenager's eyes. Itachi stared back impassively._

_Sasuke finished the rest of the meal, and finally made himself drink the soda. He wound up almost draining the glass, because he was thirsty and it didn't taste weird enough to stop. His brother left the dining room soon after, shutting himself in his room like usual; Sasuke wandered through the house, waiting to feel sick. A few hours later, he finally crawled into bed.  
-_

_He was still alive when he woke up the next morning. Sasuke lay on his side, staring at the wall that separated his room from Itachi's, and realized that this would be the rest of his life._

—

Sakura had grown a lot quieter over the last few days, distracted by debating something, though she wouldn't decide until this evening. Naruto hadn't noticed, because he'd been going to work and coming back growling under his breath. He didn't talk to Jiraiya unless he had to, which with as long as he'd worked there, was very little; the older man had told Kabuto to come by with his deliveries earlier in the day, before Naruto arrived. Sasuke hadn't noticed either, because he was busy rearranging his sleeping schedule and distracted by his own life.

Though Sasuke couldn't read thoughts, he _could_ sense emotions. So he knew that Sakura was preoccupied by something that upset her, but wrote it off as what they'd learned from Jiraiya and Tsunade, since the feelings had started from that day.

I mention this only because he would have done something, if he had known.

-

Sasuke had only napped when he returned from the club yesterday; Sakura had only had a half-day of work, and came back to find him already awake.

When Naruto came back from Jiraiya's, grim-faced as usual, Sasuke said he'd called in sick for the evening; Sakura said they should go to the movies. Naruto cheered up enough to ask if they could sit in the back row.  
-

The next morning, Naruto had already left for work when Sakura discovered the package of red bean and mochi cakes hidden behind several condiment jars on the top shelf of the fridge.

"Oooh . . . Sasuke! Are these yours?" she called towards the bedroom.

He came out a few moments later, looking to see what she was talking about, and she was a little surprised to see him dressed in slacks and a dark button-down shirt rather than his usual jeans. "Yes."

"Can I have one?"

"No," Sasuke replied. "They're grave offerings."

". . . oh," she said quietly, and started to put them back in the fridge. Sasuke took the package.

"I'm going out," he said, back to her as he reached for his coat. "I don't know if I'll be back before dinner or not."

"Who--" but he closed the door behind him before she got any further.

-

Sasuke hated buses because of the way the passengers stared at him, so he walked until he was out of the residential area and flagged a cab. He gave the driver--a half-pure, half-robo--directions to a cemetery in a better part of town, much closer to the center, and then set the package on the seat beside him and stared out the window until they arrived.

Sasuke cradled the package in the crook of one elbow while paying, and then slid his wallet back into his coat and waited for the cab to drive off before making his way into the cemetery.

His father and step-mother's grave was over a low hill, shielding it from most of the view and sound of the traffic. Sasuke made his way there slowly; Itachi was already waiting.

"You're late," he said.

"I hate cleaning it," Sasuke answered, setting the package on the edge of the already-washed monument. "You know that."

"Selfish," Itachi replied, rolling down his sleeves. "The lighter's over there."  
-

Itachi returned the cleaning supplies he'd brought to his car, while Sasuke lit a stick of incense and put it beside the two the older man had already left. He didn't pray, or go through the motions; instead he just remained crouched in front of the stone while the incense burned, arms resting on his thighs.

He heard Itachi coming up behind him again, and Sasuke had to concentrate on the fact that he _could_ hear the sound of shoes on grass to keep from reaching for a weapons pack that wasn't there.

"Where do you want to have lunch?" Itachi asked as he stood.

Sasuke shrugged a shoulder as he turned and began following him back to the car.

"You're more reticent than usual," Itachi commented, when they were halfway through the cemetery. "What is it?"

"Nothing," Sasuke said.  
-

Itachi didn't ask further; he didn't particularly care, and he had his own concerns to occupy his thoughts. He'd had to reschedule a meeting to be here today, and if a competitor got a vendor to them in the time he was gone, it would hamper his plans badly. He was trying to avoid relying on Akatsuki these days, before their claims on him became too much to be paid back.

There was a small sushi restaurant a dozen blocks away, with two private rooms in the back that weren't excessively more expensive; it was where they usually ate annually. When Itachi took a left at the second light, Sasuke knew he was heading there. He turned on the radio, and then stared out the window.

When they were still five blocks away, sitting at a red light, he finally made himself speak.

"Itachi?"

The older man made a wordless 'what?' reply.

"Do you kn--have you heard of someone called Orochimaru?"

Itachi was silent.

Sasuke waited several unbearable seconds, and then glanced halfway over.

Itachi's knuckles were white against the gear shift. Sasuke looked back out the window, shifting a little further away.

When the light turned green, Itachi made a right rather than continuing forward. A few moments later, he turned off the radio.

Half a minute after that, he asked in a flat, soft voice, "What the fuck have you _done?_"

-

The one Akatsuki member that Itachi trusted--by which he knew the man would stab him in the front, rather than the back--ran a moderately-sized and relatively exclusive restaurant and bar, a little more famous for the giant aquarium set along one whole wall than for the quality of the food. (Kisame had complained to him once that it was impossible to find a three-star cook who also knew how and when to shut the hell up. Itachi had lacked sympathy.) Itachi drove himself and Sasuke there, informed Kisame that he needed the whole upstairs room, a silver feather and a feather translator device, and gave the man fifteen minutes to get both.

Kisame had rolled his eyes once his back was to them, but had the upstairs room cleared in ten. He told Itachi to go on up, because Sasuke was skulking in one of the corners and not entirely avoiding the other customers' second glances, and said he'd have the silver and FTD to him in another minute.

Itachi ordered lunch for himself and Sasuke when Kisame brought the equipment; by the time the other man returned with the appetizers twelve minutes later, Itachi was settled back in an armchair and busy working on the feather. He didn't waste time recognizing Kisame again.

Sasuke was slumped in the couch perpendicular to the chair, with one arm stretched over the back and a foot braced on the edge of the table that his and Itachi's seats were grouped around. His coat was tossed on the far side of the couch.

Kisame was one of those people who knew that the other half of the quote was "To thine own self be true, and it must follow thou cannot then be false to any man," and therefore cheerfully told himself that Itachi's sister wasn't much of a girl. Somebody really needed to sell her on makeup and padded bras--the waitress who got the most tips swore by them, and Kisame figured she would know.

He _did_ acknowledge that Sasuke was watching him out of the corner of his eyes, though, as he set the plate of vegetable tempura on the table.

"Did you want something else?" Kisame asked with a raised eyebrow, when Sasuke had watched him the whole time. Sasuke finally looked away.

"No," Itachi replied, before the younger man could say anything. He was still focused on the FTD, despite the incisive tone of his voice. "He thinks you should be a shark."

There was a faint sound of nails scraping cloth as the hand that Sasuke had resting on the back of the couch curled into a fist. Kisame looked at Itachi, then at Sasuke, and then decided that this was a family matter and he didn't want to know.  
-

"You're living with a woman?" Itachi noted a few minutes after Kisame closed the door behind him.

"She's Naruto's girlfriend, not mine," Sasuke replied to the wall he was staring at.

Itachi raised an eyebrow and actually looked up from the screen for a moment. "And she's staying in your apartment? I expected more self-respect from you."

"She's a decent cook and keeps up her share of the rent," he replied tensely. "I don't care."

"Hm," Itachi replied, looking back at the screen. "Dogs must live up to their reputation, if he's gotten that kind of concession out of you. . . ."

"_You'll never meet him_," Sasuke snarled at him, and then clenched his jaw violently and glared at the wall again.

Itachi gave him a sidelong glance without looking up from the screen, but said nothing further.

He soon came across Sakura's medical school records, which indicated that she had dropped out with two years to go, despite the fact she'd had excellent scores on the practice National Medical License exams. Itachi made a note of that, and didn't mention it to Sasuke.  
-

Several hours later, Itachi was finished storing information on the silver. He'd expected it to take a long time to transfer all the data he and the other Akatsuki had collected on Orochimaru without using the Vurt so much that it alerted the Game Cat, but it was already late afternoon. Kisame had cleared away the half-eaten beef sukiyaki long ago, so Itachi finished up with the translator, and then drained his cold tea and went downstairs to tell Kisame to make some egg rolls to go for him.

Sasuke had fallen asleep on the couch. Itachi shut the door loudly behind him, and noted the abrupt and distracted way Sasuke jerked awake.

"Read this here," he said, setting the translator and the silver on the table. "I'm leaving."

Sasuke sat on the edge of the couch, rubbing a hand through his hair and not looking up. Itachi didn't bother waiting for him to speak before he left.

—

Naruto was already back from work by the time Sasuke returned. He looked at his watch as Sakura and Naruto distangled themselves from where they'd been on the couch, and then set the FTD and the small packet Kisame had given him to hold the silver on the table and went over to the phone.

"At least say 'I'm home,' geez," he heard Naruto say as he made his way over to the table while Sasuke was dialing the club. He pulled out a chair and sat down heavily in it. "Where've you been?"

"A feather translator?" Sakura added, as she sat down in Naruto's lap. She leaned across the table and opened the device; Naruto wrapped an arm around her waist to support her. "Where'd you get this?"

"Itachi," Sasuke replied.

The manager on the other end of the phone picked up; Sasuke didn't turn to face the absolute silence behind him as he informed the man that he was still dying but he'd be in tomorrow night.

Sasuke hung up several moments later, while the manager was still in the process of threatening to fire him. He gazed at the phone for a few more seconds, and then finally turned around and sat down in the nearest chair. Naruto and Sakura were staring at him.

Sasuke opened the packet and tipped the silver feather onto the tabletop. "This is everything he was able to tell me about Orochimaru," he said, reaching for the device and concentrating on starting it up. "The FTD is so we don't have to use the Vurt more than necessary, to keep him or other people from learning that we have this."

After he'd slid the feather in and opened it up so that the information filled the screen, he turned the machine to face Naruto and Sakura again. They were still watching him.

"You really have. . . ?" Naruto asked quietly.

"Yes," Sasuke replied, folding his hands in front of his mouth in a too-familiar gesture that didn't belong to his real self. Sakura looked away, and then at the screen.

"Jiraiya told us everything," Naruto continued, still quiet. "You didn't have to . . . that man. . . . ."

"No," Sasuke replied, and he wanted to look in Naruto's eyes as he spoke but he couldn't. "Did he tell you that Orochimaru's name used to be Yashagoro?"

"What?" Naruto gave him a half-confused, half-disbelieving look. "What's--who cares?"

"That's what Orochimaru was called when he and Jiraiya created those feathers." Sasuke gestured to the feather translator with a shoulder. "In the end, all the evidence fell on Yashagoro; some poor bastard with that name's in jail, while Jiraiya's still making feathers and Orochimaru's still free. They've both covered up whatever part Tsunade had in it."

Sasuke had continued to stare at the device as he explained. He'd pulled his hands away from his face when he'd recognized the gesture he was making.

"Naruto, that hurts," Sakura whispered a minute later, just loud enough to be heard over his low growling.

Naruto pulled the arm that he'd had around her waist away. Sakura rubbed her side surreptitiously where his fingers had been digging in.

"I'll kill him," he barked.

"Don't be stupid," Sasuke replied, "you can't kill people."

Naruto's answer was only more growling.

"Sakura, can you get me some water?" Sasuke asked, reaching for the device again and beginning to move through the data.

She gave him a grateful look and quickly slid off Naruto's lap. She managed to get a hold of herself once she was out of arm's reach, and walked normally to the cabinet; but Naruto had already caught on. He flexed his hands in and out of fists, trying to calm down.

"Dammit," he bit off, glaring at the floor, the table, the counter, and everywhere that Sakura and Sasuke weren't. "_Damn_ it. **Fuck** this! The next time I see Kabuto--"

"Buy another Konoha from him," Sasuke replied.

"_What?_"

"I'm going to keep playing," Sasuke said, shifting the glass Sakura had set beside him a little further from the translator. "I don't want to play it without you. Two."

That, from Sasuke, was strange enough to send Naruto into a state of calm mostly due to confusion. Sakura leaned against the counter, because the third chair at the table was on Naruto's side, head slightly tilted and frowning. (The fourth still hadn't been repaired yet; they'd just pulled it away from the table and up against the wall.)

Naruto stared at him, uncomprehending. "Why the _hell_. . . ?"

Sasuke's hands paused over the translator, and he hesitated. Then he reached for the glass.

He'd drunk almost half of the water before he was able to set it down and speak.

"He's my half-brother," Sasuke told them, toying uneasily with the glass. "His mother was the legitimate wife. But she raised me like. . . . They were killed in a car. Accident. When I was little. Itachi took the inheritance and did something with stocks . . . he had a group cover the paperwork for him until he was of age. He ke--gives me a monthly allowance. He paid for the car."

Sasuke's hand stopped shifting along the sides of the glass, fingers tightening briefly, before he made himself relax them again. Sakura hesitated, and then moved to kneel on the floor beside the table, resting her arms on the top, near him but not touching. Naruto had clenched one hand around his fist.

". . . We were never close," Sasuke added quietly. "But I never used to hate him like this." His hand pulled away from the glass. "I want to know why."

Naruto studied his face for a little while longer, and finally slumped back in his chair. He let his hands drop between where his legs were splayed out, hand still clutching the fist.

"Fuck," he muttered, glaring at the floor.

". . . I'm sorry," he added a moment later, much quieter.

"It's not your fault," Sasuke replied, wiping the water that had condensed on the glass off on his sleeve and moving to open one of the files.

"I bought the fucking thing in the--"

"You didn't know," Sakura interjected, soothing. She reached across the table, palm up. "I remember, you told us it was safe. We _wanted_ to play."

She was lying a little, but Sasuke didn't contradict her. Naruto looked down again. "I'm sorry."

"Stupid," Sasuke replied, "she just said we wanted to play too."

"Don't call me stupid," he retorted.

"Stupid."

"Jackass."

"_Boys_." Sakura glanced upward, turning her hand to tap her fingers on table. She tilted her head enough to catch Naruto's gaze. "I want to keep playing too, okay? So buy another one from--from Kabuto?"

Naruto gave her a worried look. "But, if--"

"Please," Sakura interrupted, rolling her eyes. "It's not like my character's ever gotten into any trouble."

"But what if later--"

"She's an _airhead_," Sakura responded, giving him a mostly successful attempt at an amused look. "Airheads don't get into ninja fights. And nobody's bothered me in reality, either."

She didn't mention what Shizune had told her before firing her, about the guy who'd been asking questions. She doubted it would help how things were going.

Finally, Naruto exhaled heavily and looked over at Sasuke. The other man was watching them; he'd folded his arms on the table. Naruto looked back at Sakura, and then took her hand and squeezed it slightly.

"Kabuto's coming in at weird hours," he said at last. "I don't see him anymore. It'll take a while."

"That's fine," Sasuke replied.


	13. game 13

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. Vurt belongs to Jeff Noon. This chapter was fucking cursed.

Vurt Ninjas 13: In which Sakura steals Sasuke's thunder, and Naruto wishes his lovers weren't so high maintenance. And _insane_.  
—————

-

Two days after Sasuke brought over the information that Itachi had given him, Sakura quit her job without putting in a notice and then went to visit Naruto at work.

"Heeeey!" he said, when he heard her call down from the hall. "In here!"

Naruto was closing the dreamsnake's cage when she came in; when she saw him start to lock it, she said quickly, "Did you go on lunch break yet?"

"Nope!" he said cheerfully, letting the keys dangle in his hand as he turned to face her again. "I was waiting to finish this batch, but I'm starving--when do you have to be back at the clinic?"

"About twenty minutes," she replied. "I said I'd probably be a little late because of the buses."

"Awesome," he replied, grinning. "Lemme go say I'm leaving and I'll meet you outside?"

"Sure," Sakura said with a smile.  
-

Naruto knocked once, sharply, on the door to the filming studio. "I'm going on lunch break. I'll be back in half an hour."

Jiraiya started to tersely call, "Fine," but he was cut off by Sakura's scream.  
-

When Naruto ran back into the cutting room, he found Sakura crouched on the floor, curled in around her arm, and the dreamsnake cage tipped over with the dreamsnake slithering away across the table.

"**Sakura**!"

"Shizune's clinic," Sakura said through her clenched jaw. "Go call. . . ."

"What were you _doing!_ Sakura-chan, what the fuck!"

"Stop shaking her," Jiraiya said from behind him, as he was crossing to the main room where the phone was. "You'll spread the venom."

"**Fuck**!" Naruto half-screamed, and then picked her up. Sakura choked down a pained noise when her arm was jostled, and had to look away from the terrified expression on his face.  
-

Naruto had already driven Sakura off towards Shizune's clinic by the time Jiraiya got off the phone with the woman.

Then, because he'd picked up the suffix Naruto had used, he went on to dial the younger man's apartment.

He had to call three times before someone picked up the phone; Jiraiya didn't wait for them to speak before saying, "This is Naruto's boss. Are you Sasuke?"

"If he's skipped again I don't know where the--"

"No," Jiraiya interrupted, "he's just taken Ms. Sakura to the hospital for a dreamsnake bite."

Silence.

Jiraiya raised an eyebrow after Sasuke said nothing for three seconds, and then went on: "It's at the clinic of a woman called Shizune, at 135--"

The phone clicked at that, and Jiraiya realized Sasuke had hung up. He gave Naruto minus fifty points for his taste in men, and hit the tab to reset it. And then he called Tsunade.

Tsunade made Sasuke sound polite, but past responsibilities made her agree to meet him at Shizune's anyway.  
-

When Jiraiya arrived at the clinic, it was to find Naruto pacing the waiting room viciously. Jiraiya slammed a hand into the side of his neck, and then dumped him in the chair nearest the door to the rest of the clinic before sitting down across from him.

"Um . . ." said the man behind the counter, glancing between the two of them, "you need to sign in before we can help you, sir. . . ."

"I'm just waiting for someone," Jiraiya replied.

Naruto must have been severely creeping the nurse out before Jiraiya arrived, because he only glanced at them one last time before retreating to an area of the office that wasn't visible from where Jiraiya was sitting.  
-

Tsunade arrived at the clinic much sooner than Jiraiya expected--Naruto was still unconscious. He would have asked where she'd slept last night, if they'd still had that kind of familiarity.

''Oi," she said, striding past him and up to the counter, "go tell Shizune I want to talk to her."

"She's with a pati--"

"**Shizune**!" Tsunade yelled past the screen, making the nurse frown and pull back.

"Let her in, Migaki!" Shizune called a moment later.

The man looked like he was having a hell of a bad day, but did so; Jiraiya followed behind.  
-

Shizune looked worse than Migaki, but she smiled briefly when she saw Tsunade, letting the hand holding a roll of bandages drop to her side. "Ms. Tsunade."

"What happened?" she replied, looking down at Sakura, who was lying on the cot with her eyes closed.

"A . . . former employee of mine, she came in with a dreamsnake bite. Her boyfriend brought her in . . . what happened?" Shizune asked, looking over at Jiraiya.

"There was an accident with dreamsnakes in our cutting room," he replied. "I keep telling Naruto to lock the cages any time he leaves, but."

"Ah," Shizune replied, and Jiraiya was relatively sure she didn't believe him. "Okay. She's going to be fine, if you want to tell him."

"I'll do that when he wakes up."

Shizune gave him an odd look, and then returned her attention to Tsunade when the woman picked up Sakura's arm, examining the wound underneath the snakeweed.

"This angle . . ." Tsunade murmured, and looked at Shizune. The younger woman blinked and frowned faintly in confusion, so Tsunade turned to Jiraiya. "Did she deliberately get herself bitten?"

"It seems like that," he replied. "That game's pretty potent."

Tsunade dropped Sakura's arm, which Shizune caught before the snakeweed could slide off, and pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead.

Tsunade swore under her breath for a few moments before exhaling tiredly. "Shizune, this report--"

"There won't be a report," Shizune replied quietly, wrapping Sakura's arm. "Don't worry about anything, Ms. Tsunade."

"What?" Tsunade replied. "You'll get fined if you don't report all dreamsnake attacks."

"I don't want to be associated with Sakura," Shizune replied. "She's gotten . . . herself involved in some things I don't need."

"What do you mean?" Jiraiya replied, ignoring the look Tsunade threw him. Shizune had been too young to know about the original Konoha game.

"Just that someone came by wanting information on her," Shizune replied, after half a minute's hesitation. "I know Naruto's mostly legit, but I'm not sure about that other man."

"Somebody came by?" Jiraiya repeated. "What did they look like?"

"Um. . . ." Shizune held down the edge of the bandage, reaching for the tape. "In his twenties, with glasses . . . he had dyed hair, silver."

"Oh," Jiraiya replied, "you don't have to worry. That was Kabuto. He works for me too."

"_Oh_," Shizune said, setting Sakura's arm on the cot and looking at him. "Really?"

"Yeah," he replied. "It was probably just something involving Naruto."

"You son of a bitch," Sakura said quietly.

Jiraiya gave her a look. Shizune admonished her under her breath, but after another moment Sakura opened her eyes and shoved herself into a sitting position with her good arm, before twisting around to slide off the cot. Shizune grabbed her shoulders and stopped her when her feet were hanging over the edge.

"Stop it," she said crisply, "you know better than to move. You need to rest until the antidote takes hold."

"Naruto and Sasuke were walking around now," Sakura replied, trying to jerk free. "I'm fine."

"Male and female bodies are different," Shizune said in annoyance. "That's _basic_ anatomy."

"Let me fucking **go**!"

"Sakura!"

"**Naruto**!" she screamed suddenly, making Shizune start and let go reflexively. "**_Naruto_**"

Tsunade was pressing her hands over her ears with a hungover person's grimace, so Jiraiya stepped closer, holding his hands up in a harmless gesture. "Will you calm down?" he said, annoyed. "I had to knock Naruto out because he was scaring the other people in the waiting room. You might as well lie down until he's awake."

"You did that?" someone said from behind them, in the doorway. "Get the fuck away from Sakura."

Upon turning around, Jiraiya and Tsunade saw a shadowgirl with the long hood of her jacket pulled over half her face. This was not weird until Shizune gasped and backed away.

"Come on," the woman said, gesturing to Sakura.

"God, Sasuke, thank you," she whispered, sliding off the cot and stumbling over. He grimaced when she said his name, but took a step forward and put out a hand to steady her.

". . . You're Sasuke," Jiraiya said, staring.

He couldn't see the man's eyes under the hood, but Jiraiya was pretty sure he was glaring at him.

"Well," Jiraiya continued, eyeing the shadows around Sasuke's hands. "This explains Orochimaru's interest."

"Go to hell, _pervert sannin_," Sasuke replied lowly, bracing an arm around Sakura's shoulders and shifting her towards the door. "And tell Yashagoro to do the same."

That little name-dropping allowed them to leave the room in silence.  
-

In the waiting room, Sasuke kicked Naruto harshly in the leg, but the other man was still out. Sakura insisted that she could walk on her own if she could just keep a hand on his arm to stay steady, so Sasuke slung Naruto's arm over his shoulders and half-dragged him out.

"Where'd you guys park?" he asked, once they were outside.

"Behind the building. . . ."

Sasuke turned abruptly in that direction, and then stopped when Sakura nearly tripped at the sharp movement and waited for her to adjust.  
-

They didn't seem to be followed, so once he reached the car, he had Sakura sit on the ground next to Naruto while he rummaged through the other man's pockets for the keys. After he found them, he unlocked the back door and then pinched a nerve in her neck.

Sasuke managed to strap both Naruto and Sakura into seatbelts, though he swore a lot in the process, and then took off from the parking lot and down the first street he saw. He drove until he was completely lost, and only then shoved his hood back down from his face.  
-

"Nng," Naruto muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. Then he started and opened his eyes. "Sakura-chan!"

"She's right there," Sasuke replied, without looking up from the map.

Naruto lunged sideways, then wrestled off his seatbelt and hugged her tightly. "What the fuck--why did they let her out if she's unconscious!"

"I did that," Sasuke replied.

"_What!_"

"She insisted on walking right after getting the snakeweed," he said. "At least now she's not moving around."

"Why didn't you make her stay there?"

"Because she was angry, scared, and screaming for you," he answered. "I don't know what Jiraiya said to her, but we weren't staying."

". . . Fuck," Naruto said quietly. "What the fuck is going _on?_"

"You and I have Vurt in our blood," Sasuke replied. "She felt left behind."

Naruto was silent for a long while, and finally asked, "Did you know this before?"

"No," the other man replied, hunching slightly as he continued to stare at the map. "I was too preoccupied to pay attention."

Naruto looked at him for another minute, and then slumped back in the seat.

"How'd you get here?" he asked.

"Put your seatbelt on," Sasuke replied, rearranging the map. "Jiraiya called and said you'd taken her to Shizune's."

He handed the map back, with one finger indicating the street they were on; Naruto took it a moment later.

". . . Thanks," he muttered.

After Sasuke had buckled on his seatbelt, Naruto slumped further against Sakura, glaring at the map. "I bet you were cool, weren't you?"

"What?"

"When you showed up and saved the fucking day while I was unconscious. I bet you were cool."

Sasuke was silent for several seconds, and then started the car.

"I was," he replied dryly. "But I didn't break that guy's arm like I wanted to this time."

Naruto kicked the back of his seat. "Turn left up ahead," he said, when Sasuke quit swearing at him.


	14. game 14

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. Vurt belongs to Jeff Noon.

Vurt Ninjas 14: In which Kabuto is going to be eaten by a Vurt creature some day.  
—————

-

Sakura regained consciousness while they were climbing up the stairs to their apartment. She swore half-heartedly at Sasuke, and then remained awake long enough for Naruto to cajole her into eating part of a sandwich before falling back to sleep. Naruto carried her from the couch to the bedroom.  
-

Sasuke got in early from the club; he'd equal parts bribed and threatened another DJ to take over the last hour for him, since Jiraiya's phone call had woken him up earlier than he was normally used to.

He heard the bedroom door open a couple minutes later, assumed it was Naruto, and was half surprised when Sakura came down the hall.

"Hi," she said, in that quiet sort of voice people used when they didn't want to wake someone up.

"Mn," he replied, nodding over the open door of fridge.

Sakura sat down at the table, started to fold her arms on the table, and then changed her mind and sat back, resting her hands in her lap.

"We really need to fix that chair," she said after several moments, staring at the seat still pulled up against the wall.

Sasuke decided he was too tired to make anything, and shut the door. "How do you feel?"

"Stupid," she replied.

He looked over at that.

"Now he can track all of us through the Vurt, right?" she continued, staring up at him.

Sasuke glanced at the floor, and then turned to the cabinet the glasses were in. "Yes."

Sakura snorted quietly, and looked down at her hands. "Like I said, stupid."

Sasuke turned on the tap, tilting the glass slightly so the sound of the water hitting it would be muted. "Two of us or three of us, there's not that much difference."

"I quit my job, too," she added. "I'm running out of clinics, and I'm not sure Shizune will take me back."

He turned off the tap, but didn't have a response to that.

"I should probably just quit selling drugs," she continued, slumping further back in the seat. "If I go back to Ms. Shizune's in a few days and act really apologetic, and say I won't be leaving, she might rehire me."

Sasuke frowned over the glass, and then brought it down and leaned against the counter. "You're just going to stop?"

"Yeah," she replied. "I've saved about half of what I need. I'll just . . . find a way to get the rest."

Sasuke could have saved them both an ugly scene later if he'd asked what she was saving for, but he wasn't that kind of person. He nodded once instead and took another drink of water.

"Are we going to be okay?" she asked, after another minute had passed. "If he can . . . now?"

Sasuke shrugged.

"I don't know," he replied, setting the glass beside the sink. "Maybe if we didn't play it anymore, and laid off all feathers for a while until he got interested in someone else, but how many times have we already tried that?"

"Five," Sakura answered.

Sasuke looked at her.

"I know it was rhetorical," she replied.

He made an almost amused noise and pushed away from the counter. "I'm going to shower."

"Night," Sakura said, standing up. She pushed her chair back beneath the table while Sasuke made his way to the bathroom, and then went back to bed.

—

The following week was a mess, though it was a quiet kind of one.

Sakura had managed to convince Shizune to let her come back, from a combination of the woman writing her temper off as an odd effect of the snakebite and being relived by the news Jiraiya had given her. Naruto was still not really talking to Jiraiya, but since Sakura hadn't told him or Sasuke what the man had said about Kabuto, he hadn't quit yet. Sasuke was waiting for the weekend, when Itachi would be in a slightly more favorable mood.

The weekend came and went, and he didn't make the call. He spent the next three days visibly pissed off, though he refused to tell Naruto and Sakura that it was at himself.  
-

Sasuke didn't bring up the ability of Orochimaru to track them all now, and Sakura couldn't force herself to admit what a bad idea it had been to Naruto. So it took him a while to think of the possibility.

In fact, he didn't think of it until after he'd bought a few feathers, two pinks and a black, each in their favorites, when one of the other dealers came by the workshop. Naruto tossed the packet into the backseat with a fit of swearing, but by the time he reached the apartment he'd calmed down enough to recognize that he'd be screwed if a patrol car drove by and saw it.

He shoved the packet into the bottom drawer of the dresser. Sakura found it the next day, while hunting for a missing sock, and set it on top of the dresser. Sasuke moved it under the loose change jar a few hours later, but arranged it so that the weight wouldn't crush the feathers.

—

Three days after that, they learned that Sasuke had been fired.

Sakura had glanced at the clock that evening, and then did a double take. "Sasuke, you're going to be late! It's almost ten!"

"I'm fine," he replied, turning another page of the newspaper.

"Oh, you got someone to cover you for a couple hours?"

"I got fired."

". . . What?" Naruto said.

"I let the limbic splitter run down," Sasuke said, turning another page, too soon to have read anything. "It was only for fifteen seconds, but with all the other stuff, it was a good enough reason."

"What were you doing?"

Sasuke gave him a sidelong look. "I was on the _phone_," he said irritatedly, but Naruto's suspicious expression didn't fade.

"Since when do you answer your phone when you're working?" he asked.

"My brother called," Sasuke replied tightly, and turned another page.

"Ita--why?"

"Family stuff."

By that point Naruto was pretty sure Sasuke was lying about _something_, but the other man's posture had been getting more and more tense, so he forced himself to let it go until later.

". . . What are you going to do now?" Sakura asked, after a couple minutes had passed awkwardly.

"I don't know," he replied. "I'll look for something."

—

If Naruto had not been Naruto, regardless of any influence from his Vurt self, he might have thought he was watching his relationships fall apart. Because he _was_ Naruto, he came to the conclusion that since this had all started when he bought that game, the only way to end it was to see the damn thing through so they could move on.

Not the most mentally healthy of choices, but his heart was in the right place.  
-

Sakura was the one who had to be up the earliest, so Wednesday evening he asked her to set the alarm an hour sooner than usual, saying that Jiraiya needed him in early to see a shipment out.

Jiraiya was already at the workshop when he arrived--the door was unlocked, and he could see some of the lights on through the post-dawn haze.

Naruto parked the car where it would be visible to anyone driving up, but not to someone on the inside unless Jiraiya was randomly struck with the urge to take a stroll, and then folded his arms behind his head and waited.

Kabuto slowed down slightly when he first turned into the warehouse lot, but he parked in the same place he usually did, about four meters away. Naruto got out of the car.

"Jiraiya didn't tell me your hours had changed," Kabuto remarked, closing the door behind him with the hand not holding a delivery package.

"They haven't," Naruto replied, sliding his hands in his pockets to show he wasn't there to pick a fight, even though Kabuto hardly looked disturbed or worried. "I just wanted to catch you. Can you sell me another Konoha?"

Kabuto started to raise an eyebrow, but then stopped himself. "Not right now--I don't carry them on me."

"I know," Naruto replied. "I figured you could bring it another time." He shifted his weight. "Since our hours are different, I'll bring the money for a couple. Okay?"

The corner of Kabuto's mouth quirked up in a smile.

"If you tell me where you are in the game," he replied, setting a hand on his hip and letting the package dangle, "and you have the money, I can tell you how many feathers you'll need to avoid having to see me for a long time."

Naruto figured he shouldn't have bothered trying to be decent. "Sasuke and I, we just got into a fight on the hospital roof. He ran off, but we haven't seen any more--we had to jerk out because Sakura's pager went off."

"Ah," Kabuto said softly, in a way Naruto didn't like. "You're nearly through the first part, then. Three more feathers should take you through what's coming, with a little leeway for your schedules."

"I'll take four," Naruto replied. "Give me a quarter discount."

Kabuto raised an eyebrow.

"He wants us playing this game, right?" Naruto said flatly, staring at him. "He'll be gaining more than he's losing."

"Mr. Orochimaru doesn't exactly live in reality much," Kabuto replied. "I'm the one using the money. And I _am_ fond of eating and paying rent."

Naruto studied him for a long time.

". . . Why'd you do it?" he finally asked, letting his hands slid out of his pockets. "If he's anything like that guy. . . . "

"Haven't you noticed?" Kabuto answered.

"What?"

"The Vurt is _changing_, Naruto," he said. "They're starting to find dreams in it that we haven't put there."

Naruto frowned, staring at him. "What? That's . . . that's not possible."

"No, it's not," Kabuto agreed, smiling again. "But it's happening anyway. The Vurt is becoming self-dreaming."

Naruto had no reply to that.

Kabuto shifted his weight again, letting his arm drop. He waved the hand holding the package negligently and turned towards the warehouse. "We're at the start of something that's never happened before. You should consider if producing pornographic feathers for mass consumption is really all you want out of life . . . it would be a shame if you followed someone else's footsteps."

"--Hey!" he snapped, clenching his hands into fists and turning sharply as the man started to walk away. "Don't talk about--and, that's a crappy reason!" He glared at Kabuto, who'd paused and looked over his shoulder at him again. "Who cares about the Vurt? Why did you sell me--if you **knew**, why did you _do_ this? We're friends!"

Kabuto was still for a moment, and then shook his head.

"We're business associates, Naruto," he corrected kindly. "Not friends."

"I'll bring the feathers Saturday morning," Kabuto added, walking away again. "I'll give you a five percent discount on them."

Naruto swallowed down the urge to dive at him and either punch him or sink his teeth into his throat. His fists were tight enough that the skin was about to break.  
-

When Kabuto came out fifteen minutes later, Naruto had driven his car around to the other side of the warehouse, where he normally parked. Kabuto noted with vaguely amused irritation that the younger man had keyed the passenger side door of his car before leaving.


	15. game 15

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. Vurt belongs to Jeff Noon.

Note: What Ino was referring to in her conversation with Sasuke is the fact that shadowgirls/boys were originally created when people drugged up on Fecundity10 had sex with corpses. Don't ask me how the gestation and birthing process went, Mr. Noon conveniently skipped over that part.

Vurt Ninjas 15: In which Ino is really not kidding about that threat.  
——————

-

As they had both gone through the side effects of getting Vurt in their blood, Naruto and Sasuke knew that it was going to affect Sakura eventually too. Naruto kept the four Konohas he'd bought from Kabuto hidden in a box full of old manga beneath the bed, waiting until the inevitable passed.  
-

Sasuke had yet to start looking for a new job since the evening Itachi had told him that if he really wanted his help, he needed to prove it, and Sasuke had consequently left the phone on and hidden in his pocket so Itachi could hear the limbic splitter run down and the club manager tell him loudly to get the fuck out and not come back. This left him with a lot of free time, and meant his sleeping schedule was still rather erratic.

Despite that, he was awake when the phone rang early Tuesday afternoon.

"What," he finally answered, when the person on the other end had called back for the third time.

"Are you Sasuke?"

"Who's asking."

"It's Ino," she replied tersely. "You need to come get Sakura."

He exhaled quietly. "What happened?"

"We were out shopping, and then she just . . . got weird. When we came up to this hairdresser, she went in and said she wanted her hair cut and dyed pink. And she's not listening to me--I called as soon as she went into the back."

Sasuke closed his eyes. "You should call Naruto. He's better at deal--"

"She's calling me 'Ino-chan,' asshole," Ino interrupted. "I know about that damn game. So **you** need to come down here and tell her to--I don't know, but _fix_ it!"

It took Sasuke a few moments to relax his shoulders enough to start looking for a scrap of paper. "Where are you?"

He hung up as soon as Ino gave him the address, and then speed-dialed Jiraiya's office from his cell as he went to get his jacket.

"Get a damn cell phone already," was the first thing he said when Naruto picked up.  
-

He took the bus, because it was faster than waiting to try and catch a taxi.  
-

Ino looked up from the magazine she'd been glaring at when the bell over the door rang, and then tossed it aside and stood as Sasuke stepped inside.

"Took you long enough!" she snapped, folding her arms. "She's practically done."

"It's just hair," he replied in a voice a couple registers higher than natural, looking over the partition. He could see Sakura in one of the seats in the middle, but she was sitting with her back to him, listening to a woman explain something.

"You don't think it's going to hurt her, to look like that?" Ino replied, and this time a little of the aggressiveness in her voice had faded to genuine concern.

Sasuke shrugged a shoulder tiredly. "She's not stupid. It'll wear off."

"Getting infected with Vurt doesn't just 'wear--'"

"_Sasuke-kun!_"

"Fuck," Sasuke muttered, and looked over again. Sakura had pushed herself out of the seat and was trotting over.

"How do I look?" she asked, with a nervous, slightly pleading expression that disturbed Sasuke more than he let show. That expression would have been fine in a context of wood buildings with cables jerry-rigged haphazardly along them and the remains of old leaves underfoot no matter _what_ the season, but in a small store that smelled of chemicals with the noise of the cars racing along the street barely muted by the glass, it was **wrong**.

"Fine," Sasuke replied, dropping both the pitch and volume of his voice and hoping that no one else was close enough to overhear. He nodded at the door. "Let's go."

"Okay! Just let me get out of this--" she gestured vaguely to the smock she'd been wearing, to keep the dye off her skin and clothes "--and pay, and I'll be right there!"

He nodded once again, and turned towards the door. "I'll wait outside."

"Right." She grabbed Ino's arm abruptly and started pulling her past the partition, to the small restroom in the back. "C'mon, Ino-chan, don't bug him."

"Ex_cuse_ me?" Ino retorted, and then made an 'urk' noise when Sakura just pulled harder.  
-

When they came out, Sasuke was leaning against the small portion of brick wall between the display windows of the hairdresser's and the clothing store beside it, slightly hunched over. The weather had turned during the last week, but he deliberately kept wearing a jacket too light for the chill, to have an excuse for keeping his hood low on his face. Sakura immediately slipped her hand through one of his arms and held on, shifting in the process so that she was between him and Ino.

Sasuke noted that Sakura didn't seem fazed by the cars or the mostly metal and stone buildings, and didn't bother trying to distangle her arm. Instead, he straightened away from the wall and looked over at Ino. "Where'd you park?"

"Around the back . . ." she replied, turning slightly and pointing to the corner of the block.

"Are you ready to go home?" he asked, and looked at Sakura's face as he added: "Naruto's waiting for us."

The expression on Sakura's face shifted at that, moving to something between the Vurt and the real, and Sasuke figured that was the best he could hope for at the moment.

He nodded faintly at Ino, and then began to follow her as she led the way to the car. Sakura walked next to him, arm still linked through his but not leaning on him like she had been before.  
-

They made it to the parking lot before Sakura pulled her arm away. Sasuke stopped as she rubbed a hand against her eyes; Ino noticed and paused a moment after, turning partly to face them.

Sakura kept the hand over her eyes for another moment, and then pressed both of her hands over her ears, curling in on herself as she did.

"Sakura?" Ino asked worriedly, stepping closer. "Are you okay?"

"Sasuke," she said softly, eyes still squeezed shut, "can you knock me out again?"

Ino made a 'what?' face. Sasuke spoke louder than usual, so Sakura would be able to hear him. "Naruto'll kill me."

"I'm going crazy."

Sasuke exhaled, and then reached out and tugged one of Sakura's hands away from her ear, to have the room to set his own against her neck.

"Hey!" Ino said sharply, and then moved to help him catch Sakura when she slumped. "Asshole!"

"You heard her ask," he said with irritation. "Are you going to drive us home or should I get a damn cab?"

Ino glared at him for five full seconds. When Sasuke remained unmoved, she wrenched her keys out of her purse and stomped towards the car.

She unlocked the passenger side door before moving to the driver's side; Sasuke opened it just long enough to unlock the back door and then closed it again. Ino's annoyed expression became slightly more annoyed, but all she did was lean over and relock it.

It took Sasuke some effort to get Sakura into the backseat and buckled up, because Ino's car had different belts than he was used to. He managed after about a minute, however. Ino started the car after he'd slid in via the opposite door and shifted so that he was sitting in the middle, next to Sakura. He made an irritated noise when she started backing out of the parking spot before he'd gotten his seatbelt on.

Ino was silent until they were several streets away; and when she spoke, what she said was: "Were you an original?"

Sasuke gave her a disgusted look.

"What?" she asked flippantly, glancing at him in the rearview mirror. "If you aren't, that just means the corpse is further back in your ancestors."

"It's none of your fucking business," he snapped.

"I am," Ino replied, focusing on the road again. "I ran away from home when I learned about it."

He shifted in his seat.

"Never went back," Ino continued, making a left. "Sakura hid me in her room for a few days, and helped me pick enough pockets at the mall to pay for a cheap room near the outskirts."

In spite of everything, Sasuke couldn't help raising an eyebrow at that.

"She kept making me go to school, too," Ino added. "And this was despite the fact that her parents didn't like me, because I was a shadowgirl--did you know they cut her off after she insisted on being my roommate after we graduated high school?"

"No," he replied, after Ino had waited expectantly for several seconds. "She doesn't talk about them."

Ino snorted. And then she looked at him in the rearview again.

"Sakura's my best friend," she said seriously. "If you or Naruto have fucked her up with this game, I'll kill you."

". . . You'll be caught," Sasuke pointed out. "Even if you use your shadow to head trip us and make us kill ourselves, it'll still leave traces."

"Once Shikamaru gets off his ass and passes bar, he could free someone who assassinated the Emperor with _witnesses_," Ino replied with only a little exaggeration. "I can wait."

Sasuke stared at her in the rearview mirror for two more streetlights, but Ino didn't deign to look at him. Finally he snorted and looked out the window that Sakura wasn't slouched against.  
-

Ino insisted on helping him carry Sakura up to the apartment. Naruto had already arrived, and answered the door too quickly to have been doing anything other than pacing in the main room. As Sasuke had predicted, the first thing Naruto did when he saw Sakura--after gaping at her hair--was yell at him.

He hadn't predicted that Ino would back him up that it had been at Sakura's request this time, regardless of how indignantly she went about it. Naruto made irritated growling noises and carried Sakura to the bedroom himself.

"Hey!" Ino said, when Sasuke was about to step into the apartment now that Naruto was no longer blocking the way. She reached out and caught his elbow.

He restrained the now-reflexive urge to attack at unfamiliar contact and glared at her. Ino echoed the expression.

"When she wakes up, call me, okay?" She let go of his coat, and the glare eased slightly. "Even if she's not ready to see me yet. Call me."

"Fine," Sasuke said, and set a hand against the door.

Ino pursed her lips, but finally huffed and turned sharply, tossing her ponytail over her shoulder with a smooth motion of her head as she did. Sasuke shut the door.  
-

When Naruto had finished pulling off Sakura's shoes, tucking a blanket over her, trying to gently shake her awake, and generally fussing, he came back to the main room to find Sasuke lying on the couch with his arms folded over his eyes. Naruto looked at him for a few moments, and then pulled one of the chairs away from the table and sat down backwards in it, draping his arms along the back.

". . . Think she'll be okay?" he finally asked.

"How should I know?" Sasuke snapped, with the anger of someone who's been asked and asked themselves the same question too many times in one day.

Naruto, not knowing these extenuating circumstances, gave him an irritated glare.

He couldn't maintain it for long, though, and dropped his chin to his arms, turning to look at the bedroom door again. "You were weird for a while after, but I thought since she's just a pure human. . . . Do you two have anything in common?" he mused with badly faked casualness, but Sasuke gave him credit for not mentioning the girl thing.

"You were weird too," he pointed out instead. "It just wasn't as obvious because we weren't playing yet."

Naruto frowned and looked back at him. "I was not! How?"

"You didn't bring any of your girls home until after you got bit," Sasuke said. "That was pretty fucking weird."

Naruto made a dramatic motion with his hand. "But, she's Sakura! Of course I--. . . uh, wait. Girls?"

Sasuke let his arms drop to his chest and gave him a Look.

". . . eheh," he mumbled, slouching down and ducking his head behind his arms, until only above his eyes was visible over the back of the chair. ". . . I'm sorry, Sasuke. I. . . ."

Naruto paused, realized that he had no excuse, and therefore didn't try to give one. He slouched down a little further.

"Whatever," Sasuke replied, folding his arms over his eyes again. "It's not like I expected any better from a rutting dog anyway."

". . . Asshole."

If Sasuke had intended to make some biting quip in response to that, it was prevented by the shout from the bedroom.

"Oh my _God!_"

Naruto straightened up somewhat, looked down the hallway, and then looked at Sasuke.

". . . **I** brought her home," the other man replied.

There was no arguing with that. Naruto exhaled, and then shoved himself up and away from the chair with the air of a man going to meet his fate. In the meanwhile, Sakura had thrown open the bedroom door and rushed to the bathroom. "What did I **_do_**?"

"Hey," Naruto said, approaching the door, "Sakura, calm down, calm down."

"My hair is _hers_." Sakura swore. "What was I _thinking!_"

". . . I have no idea. Hey, at least you didn't pick a fight with Ino?"

Dead silence followed. He could imagine the look Naruto was getting, regardless of whether he had a point or not.

Sasuke let his arms drop to his chest again and stared up at the ceiling, only half-listening while Sakura and Naruto went on talking.


	16. game 16

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. Vurt belongs to Jeff Noon.

Vurt Ninjas 16: In which they meet an enemy who became a friend who in reality's probably still an enemy. Say that three times fast.  
——————

-

A few days later, Sasuke went into the bathroom to find Sakura messing with her hair in front of the mirror.

"It's okay," she said, glancing over. "I'm almost done. . . ."

She dragged a hand though her bangs one last time, and then sighed. "I've washed it as much as I can already, but there's still so much left in."

"I noticed the bathtub had turned pink," he commented, leaning against the door frame.

Sakura half-snickered. "Yeah. . . ."

"Can't you re-dye it?"

She shook her head, then pushed the bangs out of her face. "Not for a while. I dye my hair so much, it's already like straw even with lots of conditioner. . . ."

"You said you were going to quit selling drugs," Sasuke pointed out. "So you won't need to keep doing that anymore, right?"

"Heh . . . yeah. . . ." Sakura glanced at the mirror again. "Ms. Shizune probably won't know me when she sees what I really look like." She stared at the mirror for another minute; Sasuke shifted his feet.

"I'm going to stick with contacts until I get rid of this, though," she said abruptly, looking away from the mirror and starting to straighten up her combs. "I don't think I--if my eyes weren't green, but oh well."

"Wear the blue ones," he replied.

Sakura looked up at him. "Why?"

"If your hair were electric pink, you'd look like Beauty." Sasuke was beginning to realize he should have stayed quiet and had folded his arms, glaring at the floor. "You could . . . tell people you were cosplaying, or something."

Sakura continued to stare at him. ". . . What?"

He waved a hand back towards the bedroom. "In that box of manga Naruto keeps under the bed, there's one with a character that kind of looks like . . . she's got pink hair and blue eyes. That's it."

Sakura generously didn't keep prodding him to explain, but didn't bite down her smile either. "I didn't think you read comics."

"You two both work most days," he replied, straightening away from the door frame. "We don't have a TV."

Sakura chuckled again, and then pushed her brush and makeup to the side. "Here, bathroom's yours."

—

Like the dreamsnake that had bitten Sasuke, none of them suspected Gaara of being planted in that burger shop.

Not even Gaara himself.  
-

"I really think it's Leland," Sakura continued. "You saw how he's treating the cousin who looked just like her. That was emphasized for a reason."

Sasuke shook his head and bit into a fry. When he spoke his voice was a pitch higher than reality--a necessity for him being out in public, but creepy nonetheless. Sakura wasn't fond of staying home much, but she had to admit that if it was a choice between hearing Sasuke like this and being bored in the apartment. . . .

"You can't base it just on what Ino saw," he replied derisively. "She wasn't even watching this until now. It was Jacoby. Part of a whole episode last season was about getting that tape back from him."

Sakura made a 'pffft' noise and reached for her soda. "You're ignoring that brother's impact on the murder."

He frowned at her. "Which one?"

"The French ones . . . I can never say his name right. The drug dealers." She perked up slightly. "The one connected to Leo! He's as much a suspect as Dr. Jacoby, so what do you have to say to _that?_"

"Keh," Sasuke answered, but was kept from saying anything further by the man who came up to their table then.

"Hello," he said with a smile. "Sounds like you're playing Twin Peaks, too?"

Sasuke just looked at him. Sakura glanced at the counter from the corner of her eye; Naruto had been moving between lines the last few minutes, and--as ordered by the law of Murphy--had wound up stopping the new line dead each time. He was now standing resolutely in the far left and glaring at the middle and right as they moved forward faster to spite him.

"Me, I think Leo did it," the man continued, resting his palms on the table and leaning forward slightly, smiling. "You just can't trust a man like that, who doesn't know how to treat a woman."

"That's nice," Sakura replied, since Sasuke was still staring dispassionately. "Are you done now, or are you going to keep interrupting our meal?"

The man's smile fell, and he pushed away from the table with a snort. "Dykes," he muttered, as he started to walk off.

Sakura paused for a moment, and then started laughing. She quickly tried to smother it with her hands, but then made the mistake of looking at Sasuke. When she saw the expression on his face, she burst into another fit of giggles.

Naruto glanced over at them. Sasuke turned away and glared out the window, reaching for his fries again.  
-

Sasuke's expression had threatened _deadly harm_ when Naruto finally came over after getting his food and asked what had been so funny, so Sakura just shook her head and made 'I'll tell you later' motions with her hands. Naturally, that didn't improve Sasuke's mood much. Nor did the fact that Naruto confiscated his fries in retribution once he figured out that it had something to do with him.

Sasuke swiped his drink in return; Sakura finally had to swear and tell them to act their age--and that if they spilled anything on her clothes, she was kicking their asses.

Naruto was still in the middle of wolfing down the handful of fries he'd managed to keep a hold of when Sasuke yanked the carton back, when he suddenly froze. Sasuke and Sakura looked over--her with curiosity, him with lingering annoyance.

Naruto ignored them both and sniffed the air deeply.

He swallowed the fries with a small choking noise a couple seconds later, then shoved his chair back and stood. "Let's go."

"What?" Sakura asked, looking up at him.

Naruto scooped her drink and plastic salad container onto the tray, accidentally tipping the cup over as he did. "Let's _go_."

Sakura continued to frown at him, but when Sasuke stiffened--of course Sasuke had been scanning the area once he noticed Naruto's nervous behavior, she wouldn't have thought of something like that, no, _her_ character was useless, so why was half of her surprised--and stood as well, she caught on.

Sasuke grabbed her by the arm as she scooted away from the table, and then pushed her over to the other side of Naruto, into the middle of the aisle and farthest from the booths and tables.

He pushed her there behind Naruto rather than in front of him, so it wasn't until she'd stepped away from the other man's back with an irritated noise that she saw Gaara sitting at the table.

She jerked and froze.

Naruto had to slide an arm around her waist to get her to take a few stumbling steps again. Sasuke had moved to the other side of Naruto, putting himself between them and the booth they would have to pass.

Gaara was staring at Naruto, eyes wide. It took Sakura a moment to realize that the reason he looked wrong was because he had eyebrows.

It took her another moment after that to realize there was someone else in the booth, sitting across from him, and that it was his sister. Temari, the girl with the fan and the weird hair, except that she didn't have the fan and her hair was just in two pigtails, normal. They both looked normal.

Gaara was still staring at Naruto, and Naruto was staring back, and Sasuke was a step to the side, hand dangling by his thigh even though there was no weapons pack there, and Sakura realized that at some point all three of them had stopped in the middle of the aisle. Other customers were muttering as they pushed past.

It was Temari who moved first. She'd been drinking a soda when they started to walk past, and at first had stilled and kept it in place, straw between her lips; but after several seconds passed, she shifted faintly and began to set it back on the table.

Naruto jerked then; and a moment later he tightened the arm he had around Sakura's waist, pulling her closer, and then slung his other arm over Sasuke's shoulders.

And then he bared his teeth at Gaara.

He stalked forward a second after that, growling in the back of his throat, and Sasuke and Sakura were forced to move with him.

Sakura almost looked over her shoulder when Sasuke shoved open the door, to see if Gaara was still watching them with that confused, lost expression; but she could still taste the granules of sand that had drifted into her throat when she'd been crushed against the tree, and didn't.  
-

Sasuke drove out of the parking lot skittishly, taking the turns too sharp and wrenching the stick when he shifted gears. Naruto glared out the window and kept a fist pressed tight against the glass.

"He's not a bad guy," he said abruptly, when they were several blocks away--past the turn for their apartment, in fact. It was hard to tell if Naruto was talking to them or himself. "He's not. It's just . . . how things happened."

Sakura glanced down at her hands, folded in her lap. A few moments later, Sasuke jerked the car sharply to the right.

Sakura reflexively grabbed the door handle at the turn; Naruto caught the one attached to the ceiling and snapped at Sasuke about his lousy-ass driving. Sasuke ignored them both and turned into the first lot they came across, one for a movie theater and a few miscellaneous shops.

"Sasuke?" Sakura asked, after he'd parked slightly over the lines and turned off the engine.

"He recognized us," Sasuke replied, staring at the steering wheel. "Or you at least," he added, jerking his head slightly at Naruto without looking over at the other man.

"Yeah?" Naruto replied, but Sakura was already catching on.

"He recognized you because he's played the game," Sasuke continued, hands tight around the wheel. "At the chuunin exam, the Sand was allied with Orochimaru."

". . . No," Naruto said quietly, fist clenching around the handle. "No way. . . ."

"But Temari recognized us, too," Sakura interjected, and Naruto glanced back at her. "And she was--I mean, you don't usually eat lunch with people you think want to kill you, right?" After a pause, when neither of them replied, she added: "The expression on his face was like after your fight. So if he's played that far, then he should have changed a little, no matter what he was like."

Sasuke snorted. "Why would something that convenient happen?"

He was still glaring at the steering wheel, but Sakura looked at him anyway. "_We've_ been affected by it. Why should he be spared?"

She inflected the 'he' more than she'd meant to. Naruto looked out the window again and made a quiet noise in the back of his throat, but didn't speak.

After a minute of silence, Sasuke unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the door. "Sakura, you drive."

"Uh, okay . . ." she murmured, unbuckling her own belt and climbing out. She went through the drivers' side door, so that she wouldn't have to pass Naruto even though he wasn't looking out the window anymore.

Sasuke yanked the door shut behind him and buckled up before pulling out his phone; Sakura had barely gotten her own door closed, and was adjusting the rearview mirror when he started dialing. Naruto glanced over the chair at him, and a moment later, his face darkened.

"Oi," he said harshly, twisting further in the seat, "you're not calling--"

Sasuke glared and made a sharp motion to cut him off. A few seconds later, though, he glanced down.

"I know," he said in reply to whoever had spoken. And then, a moment later, "I need your help."

Naruto clenched one hand into a fist, gripping the other one around it. Sakura was still holding the edge of the rearview mirror, but she wasn't moving it any more.

"I know," Sasuke said again, "I'm sorry," and then Sakura let go of the mirror in order to force Naruto to loosen his grip on his fist. He was starting to cut the skin.

After several moments passed--even though Sakura was straining to hear the other person speaking, she couldn't; Naruto probably could with his heightened senses, though, which was likely why he had his lips drawn back over his teeth--Sasuke continued. "Can you tell me anything about someone named Gaara?"

Another pause, and this time Sasuke sounded slightly confused, first saying "I don't think he has a--" before catching himself and changing it to "I don't know his last name."

Whatever the person on the phone--Sakura had a good idea who it was by now, but didn't want to believe it until she had to--said in reply to that, it made Sasuke say "Yes" in a voice that was flat where it should have been sarcastic.

"He'll be connected to the game Konoha," he said. "And probably to Orochimaru." Another pause. "I can't verify the last part. But I know he will have bought at least several feathers, probably from an operator named Kabuto Yakushi." Sasuke hesitated again, though this time it seemed to be on his own part, before adding, "He may be a foreigner, but that's also something I can't verify."

Sasuke was fidgeting, something Sakura hadn't seen him do often and couldn't connect to him doing while speaking to _Itachi_ of all people. He also wasn't looking at either of them; he was staring at his legs, or maybe the floor, instead.

"Okay," Sasuke replied a few moments later. He wetted his lips slightly, another nervous gesture that was starting to scare her in a way that only the incomprehensible could do. She glanced over at Naruto, and saw that he was clenching his hands too tightly again. ". . . Yes. Th--. . . thank you."

"Goodbye," Sasuke finished after another moment, and then closed the phone and dropped it on the seat beside him like something diseased. He shut his eyes and made an effort to slouch against the seat, but his back was too tense.

"What'd he say," Naruto demanded, voice cracking slightly from his effort to keep from yelling.

"He doesn't have time to bother with it now," Sasuke replied, eyes still closed. "He'll call me later."

Naruto pulled the hand that Sakura had loosened again free and wrenched it through his hair, but bit his lip.

He didn't want to say anything any more than Sakura did--in the game, Sasuke had lost it over Itachi, had outright attacked him and then only got worse when Naruto's jutsu thing was stronger. The real Sasuke didn't seem to want to kill his brother, but still. . . .

"Let's go home," Sasuke said after several more painfully silent moments passed. His eyes were still closed. "People are going to start giving us second looks."

"Right," she murmured, and started the engine.

"Buckle your seat belt," he added.

"Yes, yes--" Sakura started to say, and then remembered how his parents had died.

She reached for the belt quietly. Naruto was grinding his fist into the seat beside his thigh.


	17. game 17

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. The Vurt book series belongs to Jeff Noon.

Vurt Ninjas 17: In which Naruto decides he was lucky to be an orphan.  
——————

-

Two days later, Sasuke had the audacity to think that things couldn't get any worse, at which point the universe _of course_ had to prove him wrong.  
-

Shizune still didn't entirely trust Sakura after the dreamsnake incident, so when she threw a syringe into the wall beside Migaki's head when he startled her by slamming a door behind her open loudly, Shizune sent her home for the day once she was done apologizing.

The door to their apartment wasn't that thick, so when she slid the key into the lock, she heard the chair suddenly scrape across the kitchen tile.

Sakura's first reaction was to keep opening the door with a muted irritation at Naruto and Sasuke for making out in the front room again; she had it open partway before it dawned on her that it was way too early for Naruto to be back from work.

"Sakura," she heard Sasuke say while she was still pausing at the revelation, and his voice was tight and strained, "get out. Go away. Come back later."

Her first thought at _that_ was that if he was cheating on them--on Naruto, **Naruto**--then he'd clearly forgotten about dogs' heightened sense of smell.

She hadn't even completed that thought when she realized that the strain in Sasuke's voice was fear.

Sakura shoved the door open and pushed around the corner so that she could see into the kitchen, groping in her purse as she did for the capped scalpel that she'd started hiding in there after getting bitten.

When she saw Itachi sitting at their kitchen table, she froze.

A couple seconds after that, however, she gave up on the scalpel and let the purse drop to the floor. As it fell, Sakura shoved the door forward enough to be able to grab the coat rack in the corner; it slammed into the door, pushing it further closed, as she spun back around and hefted it enough to point it at the man.

Itachi remained in his seat at the table, giving her a bemused look.

Sasuke had been standing by the corner of the table, his chair still pushed back from where he'd stood abruptly; but at Sakura's reaction, he pressed a thumb to his forehead that didn't quite hide the fact that he was keeping Itachi in his peripheral vision.

"Sakura . . ." he said tiredly.

She then realized that a coat rack was not really the best weapon against an S-class missingnin, and then realized that Itachi wasn't a ninja, just some stockbroker with information connections, and then realized that Sasuke didn't sound afraid now, just resigned, and _then_ realized that she probably looked like a moron and if their neighbor walked out right now, that would be a whole **world** of unanswerable questions.

She still hesitated another moment before setting the coat rack back down, though.

"Hello," she said, and counted it as an infinitesimal victory that her voice didn't crack. "It's a plea--" and that was as far as she could get before she thought of Sasuke running down the hall, painted in the curse seal, and her throat seized up.

Itachi handled the aborted greeting with poise, standing up gracefully to nod at her, which only made Sakura hate him more. Sasuke's fingers had curled, though he was still standing in place.

"A pleasure to meet you too, Sakura Yamanaka. Formerly Haruno; but you changed names a few weeks after your family disowned you during college." He smiled at her. "It's a shame you dropped out before getting your medical degree; you had excellent scores on the National Medical Exams."

Sakura deeply regretted putting down the coat rack.

When she glanced over at Sasuke, his eyes were wide. She looked back at Itachi, who was still smiling politely, and then took a step back.

Sakura bent down just enough to snatch up her purse, and fled the apartment.

She didn't go far. She was at the head of the steps when she started groping in the purse for her cell phone, and once she found it, she backtracked until she was just a couple steps from the door. Sasuke had come over to close it; he didn't close it all the way when she held out a hand.

Her other hand was shaking badly enough that Sakura finally stopped trying to use the speed dial and just punched in the numbers for Jiraiya's workshop. As she dialed, she could hear Itachi speak again, but it was too low to make out the words.  
-

Naruto must have driven like a drug addict to reach the apartment in the time he did. The apartment complex was built well enough that she didn't hear the breaks screaming as he pulled into the parking lot, but when the lobby door was thrown open hard enough that the glass cracked, that was a tip-off.

Sakura had been crouching beside the door, pretending to clutch her purse to her knees to hide the fact that she was holding the uncapped scalpel inside; but at that she stood up quickly, and then winced and rubbed her calves to get the feeling back into them. Sasuke and Itachi had still been talking inside the apartment, though it had mostly been Itachi speaking; but when the noise echoed up the stairwell, they fell silent. Sakura gave the door a worried look at that, even as she limped over to the railing to watch Naruto make his way up the stairs. He was taking them on all fours, not even pretending to walk normally.

She had enough time to think that this might not have been the best idea before he reached the landing. Inside, she heard a chair scrape across the kitchen floor again. Naruto had wrenched himself back onto his feet with the railing, and was striding up to the door.

"Wait," Sakura started to say, grabbing him by the elbow; but Naruto just shifted his balance and kicked the door open. When she held on to his arm, she wound up getting dragged behind him.

"Get out," Naruto snarled before he was even all the way around the corner to see into the kitchen. Sakura let go of his arm and stepped back near the wall, reaching into her purse for the scalpel again. "Get the _fuck_ away from Sasuke and **get out**."

"Have you been telling stories about me?" Itachi said mildly, presumably talking to Sasuke but not looking away from Naruto.

"No," Sasuke replied, more forcefully than she understood. He was coming around the table as he spoke, moving closer to Naruto. "It's just the game. Ignore him. Please."

Naruto was growling even more at that, hunching his shoulders in slightly like he was about to pounce. "I mean it, pure-fucker, get ou--!"

Sakura wasn't at an angle to see Itachi's face at that, but she _could_ see Sasuke suddenly drop into a crouch and kick Naruto's feet out from under him.

When Naruto broke off and swore at him, Sasuke caught his arm and tossed him over onto his stomach, using his knee to pin the other man to the carpet. Naruto tried to flip him off.

"I'm sorry aniki," Sasuke rattled off without looking up, struggling to keep his hold on Naruto. "It's the effects of the game. I didn't mean to cause you this much trouble. Thank you for your help, it would probably be better if you left before the neighbors start looking out of their doors."

Sakura wondered if Sasuke had even noticed what term he'd used.

She was also at an angle that she could see Sasuke had subtly placed himself between Naruto and where Itachi must have been standing. Her grip around the scalpel tightened slightly, and she lifted her hand almost out of the purse.

Itachi was silent for a little while longer, long enough for Naruto to nearly dislodge Sasuke's knee from his spine, before saying, "I want a copy of that game."

"Okay," Sasuke said, and now she was sure that he wasn't entirely thinking about what he was saying. "Just pl--please go, before there's trouble."

A moment after that, Itachi came into view around the corner. He was leaving.

Sakura took another step back when he got closer to the door, which put her up against the wall; Itachi glanced at her again with that.

His gaze fell to her hand a moment after that, and he smirked.

When he took a step forward, away from the door and towards her, she saw Sasuke almost jerk onto his feet and heard Naruto growl lower than he had yet. Sakura wrenched her hand all of the way out of her purse and grabbed the handle of the scalpel with her free one as well, holding it out in front of her.

_Not Naruto, you bastard, don't look at Naruto_.

_This isn't the same man, Sakura_.

_Not **Naruto**!_

Her palms were sweaty around the scalpel. She wasn't used to holding one without wearing gloves.

Itachi turned away, still smirking, and stepped through the door. "Honestly, Sasuke," was the last thing he said before closing it behind him.

This time when Naruto tried to throw him off, Sasuke let him.

Sakura couldn't actually hear the man's footsteps on the stairway, so she imagined them. It wasn't until the time that Itachi would be roughly on the second floor landing that she thought to let her hands drop.

Naruto had shoved himself back up onto his feet, and was so angry that he was shaking; but he hadn't said anything yet. He was just staring at Sasuke, who'd turned away from both of them and was looking out the window. His hands were clenched into fists, the shadows shimmering nervously around them.

Sakura didn't know why that was stopping Naruto--it wasn't like it ever had before--so it wasn't until she looked up from recapping the scalpel and saw the blood that was starting to collect in the cracks between Sasuke's fingers that she realized Naruto must have smelled it when he first cut the skin.

Naruto glanced at her briefly, and Sakura nodded to say that she was okay and he should go ahead and do it; and then he looked back at Sasuke. He didn't look as angry now--it was quickly being replaced by worry--but after a few more seconds, he pulled his lips back from his teeth and set his hand down heavily on Sasuke's shoulder. "You asshol--"

Sasuke spun around and punched him in the gut.

Naruto doubled over at that; but because he'd been more or less expecting it, he managed to block the knee Sasuke tried to drive into his face.

_Men_, Sakura thought, before dropping her purse behind the coat rack and quickly moving to the relative safety of the kitchen.

She couldn't bring herself to stand behind the table, however, because that was where Itachi had been sitting. The chair he'd been in was still tilted out slightly. So she lingered by the refrigerator, and was thankful that their fight was short.

Naruto managed to get a really good right hook straight into Sasuke's sternum, which had sent the other man stumbling back; but he didn't follow up on it. He was also still aching from the blow to his stomach, so when Sasuke suddenly grabbed the front of his shirt and then kicked him in the side of the knee, his legs gave out. Sasuke threw his weigh forward to make sure that Naruto crashed completely to the ground; he narrowly missed cracking both of their heads against the wall by a few inches.

When Sasuke pulled his free arm back, hand clenched into a fist, Sakura thought he was going to punch Naruto directly in the face. She thought back to the last time they'd fought, when she'd noticed what a good grasp of anatomy Sasuke had--he could kill Naruto with a blow to the nose or the temple, if he tried hard enough.

She opened her mouth to scream at him that it wasn't Itachi, but before she could speak, Sasuke slammed his fist into the floor.

It was right next to Naruto's head, close enough to his ear to make the other man jump; but it wasn't Naruto.

Sasuke punched the floor a second time, putting enough force into it that it made Sakura wince, his other fist still clenched around Naruto's shirt. He did it a third time as well, and then collapsed on top of Naruto, shaking badly. His breathing sounded strained, like it was coming through his teeth.

Everything was quiet for a few moments, and then the person in the apartment below them banged on their ceiling.

Sakura had to bite her lip to hold in what she was sure would have been a hysterical giggle. Sasuke made a hiccupping noise that might have been an aborted laugh; Naruto just banged the side of his fist into the carpet.

"Naruto," she chided, and then didn't say more because even that had come out with the breathy hysterical sound.

He grumbled something, but draped his arm across Sasuke's waist. Sasuke seized up at that, which only made Naruto tighten his hold; but he didn't try to push away.

Sakura bit down on her bottom lip, and then worried it for a while, watching them.

(Later--much later, actually--she would finally realize that that had been the first time she'd seen Naruto and Sasuke together without feeling a slight twinge of jealousy. The implications wouldn't help her mood much, in the short-term.

She would eventually learn that Sasuke had shared the same jealously seeing her and Naruto; when they would try to explain it to the other man, Sakura would finally ask what he'd think if he saw her and Sasuke together.

"You have no idea how much I fantasize about that," would be Naruto's honest answer.

She and Sasuke would snort in almost perfect derisive unison, making Naruto grin wider.)

At last, she took a step forward, closer to the carpet of the living room.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I should have thought more, before. . . . I'm sorry."

It took Sasuke a while to answer, but because his voice was almost under control when he did, she wanted to believe it was because of that. "It's fine."

"It's not--"

"I shouldn't have let him in here," Sasuke replied, face still against Naruto's shoulder, and now Sakura wished his voice _wasn't_ so controlled. Naruto looked like he wanted to bring his other arm up around Sasuke, too, but couldn't because it was pinned. "I should have fought him more. I knew it was a bad idea."

"Don't do this," Naruto said lowly. "You fought as hard as you could back there."

"That's the--!" Sasuke burst out, wrenching his arm up again.

Sakura ran forward at that, seriously worried about the damage he'd done already; but when Sasuke had shifted to pull his hand back, he'd given Naruto the chance to get his own arm free. Naruto caught his wrist before he could punch the floor again.

Sakura crouched down next to them before Sasuke had a chance to try and yank his arm free, and touched her fingers to his back of his hand.

"Let me see," she ordered gently.

Naruto let go when he was sure that Sasuke was going to let her examine his hand; Sakura tilted it towards her and started carefully trying to straighten his fingers out, so that she could check the alignment of his nails. Sasuke hissed.

"Sorry," she said softly. "I have to check if it's broken. Can you move them?"

It took him a little while, and it clearly hurt like hell, but Sasuke could still move his fingers and grip them around one of her own. His nails were all aligned, too (even if the blood under them had scared her until she'd remembered that he'd done that before the fight), and his fifth metacarpal bone seemed fine, so she didn't think he'd broken it. It was going to be badly bruised for a while, though; and it was already swelling.

"We don't have any frozen stuff, do we?" she muttered. "I know we don't have any ice. . . ."

"I'll buy some at the gas station," Naruto said, and then after another moment, "Get your heavy ass off me, Sasuke."

"Let me," was the rather succinct and fitting reply.

Naruto made a rude noise, but let his arms drop back down to his sides.

Sasuke pushed away, awkwardly because Sakura was still holding his injured hand, and Naruto managed to squirm free and stand up. "I'll be back in a couple minutes."

"I'm going with you," Sasuke said, trying to pull his hand free.

"What?" both Naruto and Sakura replied, though she added, "Even if you _walk_, it's going to hurt!"

"Fine," he replied shortly.

"I'll be fine on my own, jerk," Naruto said.

"No."

Sakura exhaled. "Look, I'll go. Wh--"

"No!" It was Naruto and Sasuke's turn to be in unison, though Naruto was slightly more vehement.

Sakura gave them both a look.

"I'm going with you," Sasuke said, once he'd determined that Naruto would pick him as the lesser evil, before pushing onto his feet with his good hand and tugging steadily until Sakura released the bad one with irritation.

"_Fine_," she retorted. "Don't listen to me, I'm just a doc--"

She cut off suddenly at that, before pressing her lips together and staring at the floor.

Sasuke looked at her for a few moments before saying quietly, "It's not . . . it's not that."

She didn't answer. Naruto glanced between both of them, wondering what Murphy had thrown at them now. "What?"

Sasuke pressed the heel of his good hand against the bridge of his nose, and a moment later dug his fingers into his scalp before dragging them through his hair.

"Later," he promised. "Let's just buy the fucking ice first."

Sakura swallowed, but didn't look up. Naruto gave her one last concerned look before finally rummaging in his pocket for his keys.

"Fine, fine, _whatever!_ Let's go!"

After the door closed behind them, Sakura continued to stare at the carpet.

Eventually, however, she pushed herself up onto her feet, and headed for the bathroom.

When Sasuke and Naruto returned, with a five-pound bag of ice that Naruto was carrying while Sasuke pressed his hand against it, they found her in the middle of cleaning the kitchen. The table was the first thing she'd scrubbed down.

When she moved from there to the bathroom, Naruto started vacuuming all the rooms; but he spent most of his time complaining as he did so, either about the acidic smell of the chemicals or the fact that Sasuke was getting to sit on the couch and do nothing.

—

By the time they'd cleaned the entire apartment, more or less, it was late evening. Sakura had hauled the sheets, towels, and the bathmat down to the laundry room, and was currently waiting for them to finish their stint in the washing machine so that she could throw them into the dryer. She'd taken a magazine down with her, but had barely opened it.

She was still staring blankly at an ad for lip gloss when Sasuke came into the room, taking the longer route around the row of washers in order to avoid the other person in there. He had a new baggie of ice on his hand, wrapped in a couple paper towels because Sakura had taken all the washcloths. She looked up when he leaned against the washer across from her.

"Where's Naruto?" she asked.

"Making dinner." Sasuke shifted the baggie on his hand before adding, "I didn't tell him yet. I figured . . . it was yours to. . . ."

"Okay," she replied, before glancing over at the man who was pulling his clothes out of a dryer.

Sasuke and Sakura remained silent until he finished and left; Sasuke watched the door for a few moments after it had closed before shifting the bag again and looking down at her.

"Is he going to blackmail me?" she asked quietly.

Sasuke didn't reply at first. "Not you."

Sakura blinked, and then looked up at him. ". . . Why--why would he think you care?"

Sasuke shrugged, which wasn't exactly an answer. "I already quit my job because he told me to."

Sakura blinked once more, staring at him. "What? I thought . . . you said it was because you were on the phone."

"I was," he replied. "He told me to get fired, so I left the phone in my pocket so he could hear it happen." Sasuke looked at the door again, away from her. "He's been trying to be more legitimate the last few years, to get out of Akatsuki's control. So he's probably not going to bother you."

"But . . . Sasuke, what's gonna--?"

"Whatever," he said, pushing away from the dryer.

"Don't!" she yelled, standing up suddenly and dropping the magazine as she did. "Don't _do_ that!"

Sasuke gave her a long look.

Sakura folded her arms against her stomach, clutching her elbows, and looked away again. "Don't just shut--us out like that, so easy. You jerk."

He exhaled through his teeth, readjusting the ice pack.

". . . I'll be fine," he replied. "He doesn't have to worry about a rival heir from me. At worst, I'll just move somewhere else."

"Mo--_leave?!_"

"No," he said, "I'll just move out. I can still see Naruto, and it'll prove I'm not interested in you. That's all he'll need."

". . . But. . . ." She shook her head violently. "Sasuke, are you sure?"

"Yes," he replied, voice quieting. "He . . . it's not like the game. He. . . ."

Sasuke swallowed and tilted his head further away. Sakura noticed uncomfortably that he was clenching his fist underneath the ice.

"As long as I'm dependant on him, he won't bother you two," Sasuke said flatly. It sounded like his jaw was tight; he must have been hurting himself.

"Relax your hand," Sakura said reflexively, and then, "--Dependant?"

"That's why he didn't want me working," Sasuke replied, still looking away from her. "It's more trouble for him to hack an independent account. It's why I was still tra--living at his house until I met Naruto, why everything's in his name. It amuses him."

Sakura realized she was clutching her arms too tightly herself, and loosened her grip. ". . . That's sick."

Sasuke sneered eloquently.

What he didn't say, however, was: _I'm the bastard child. He would have gotten away with it even if I hadn't been a freak of nature--that just made it easier._

The washer quit, and she glanced over at it, before making a small motion with her foot.

"It's better than being dead," Sasuke said a moment later, and then finally turned partially around. "Do you need help?"

"I got it," she mumbled.

She had only gotten the first armful of sheets moved before Sasuke folded his arms awkwardly and looked down at the cracked linoleum again. He made himself look up, at her back, before he spoke, though.

"Would Ino have told anyone she knows about me?"

Sakura halted in the middle of her trip from the dryer to the washer.

". . . No," she replied after a few moments, voice tight. "You really creep her out, so she wouldn't have mentioned him--you, to anyone--Sasuke, he's not going to--"

"I doubt it," Sasuke said with the combination of as much reassurance as he could muster and fake. "Like I said, he's trying to stop using the Akatsuki's power. And if she's presenting no threat, it would be more of a risk for him to do anything to her himself."

Sakura braced her hands against the edge of the washer and exhaled.

The door opened after that, and she looked up rapidly; Sasuke spun around with a tenseness that belied his last statement, but she tried her hardest to ignore it.

"--What?" Naruto asked.

Sasuke shook his head. "Wait 'til we're back in the apartment. This needs privacy."

"Yeah, that was reassuring," he drawled, though it was a little forced. "Sakura, are you okay?"

". . . Yeah. I guess. I will be."

Naruto looked even more disbelieving now, so she shook her head as well, before pushing away from the washer. "I'll tell you upstairs. What happened?"

"Dinner's ready."

"Ah," Sakura said, a little unsure how to deal with something that was normal and not an emergency. "Okay. Um, it'll be about an hour before the dryer's done. . . ."

"Leave it," Naruto said with a negligent gesture. "You were cleaning even before we got back, you've gotta be the hungriest."

Sakura gave him a mildly exasperated look. "It'll get stolen."

"I'll find it again!" he replied with the usual grin.

She rolled her eyes, and Sasuke leaned back against another washer in the row.

"I'll watch them," he said. "You two go e--"

"_No_," came the reply, and then Sakura pursed her mouth when she realized she'd spoken the same as Naruto.

Sasuke blinked once, before shutting his eyes and pressing his lips together in a gesture that looked like he was actually trying to hide amusement.

"As fun as it is to hear you do that in unison," he started to say, "this is going to get--"

"Yeah, yeah," Naruto interrupted. "No one's gonna steal a bunch of towels from us, really. Let's just eat."

"Sakura has something she needs to tell you," was Sasuke's reply.

Naruto gave him a look, and then glanced over at her, silently asking if it was true. Sakura looked down.

A moment later, she grabbed another armful of clothing out of the washer. "You're a jerk," she muttered.

"I know," Sasuke said.

—

When Sasuke returned to their apartment with the still damp sheets forty minutes later, Naruto was pacing along the living room floor. Despite his comments before, his own food was still on the counter, now cold.

Sasuke glanced at Sakura, who was still sitting at the table and lingering over her meal, as he passed by; she just shrugged, looking tired.

When Naruto went silent, it usually meant he was at his angriest--if he hadn't been wearing a shirt, they likely would have seen the fur along his spine standing up. Sasuke had no doubt that the anger was directed at Itachi, not Sakura, but he still kept an ear on the main room as he went to dump the towels and bathmat in the bathroom and drape the sheets along the shower pole to dry a little more.

When he came back in and started to spoon the remaining noodles in the pot on the oven into a bowl, Naruto said, "We should just finish it."

Sakura looked up at him. Sasuke didn't turn around, but he did shift slightly.

"Kabuto told me that we were almost at the end when I bought those last feathers--said three would be enough with leeway for our schedules. We should finish it and get it over with and then start putting everything else together."

"Masochist," Sasuke muttered under his breath.

Naruto almost snapped back something about _Sasuke_ being the one who wanted to play the game through to figure out why he hated his brother so much, but there were lines he didn't cross. "Says the guy who always plays Mainframes."

"Okay," Sakura said quietly.

This time, Sasuke did turn around. Naruto blinked, having expected her to argue against it the most.

"I don't want to quit with that fight on the hospital roof," she continued, looking at Naruto. "That's the wrong place to end this."

He paused, and then nodded. "Yeah."

"It's only going to get worse," Sasuke said. His voice was quiet this time, and not sarcastic.

"Hey, you don't know for sure!"

Sasuke gave him a look.

"What about this weekend?" Sakura interrupted. "I can ask Ms. Shizune for a couple days off, and you can tell Jiraiya--I don't know, something. We'll stock up on some easy to make food and everything."

Naruto nodded again. "Sounds good to me."

They both looked at Sasuke then, Sakura turning around in her chair to do so.

He closed his eyes briefly, and then turned back to the pot and began spooning more noodles out. "Yes."

—

Even though all of them were awake for a long time that night--the emotional turmoil not aided by the damp sheets--Naruto was the one who stayed up the longest.

He couldn't fall asleep because he had to keep fighting the urge to sit up, shake Sakura and Sasuke awake and tell them that Kabuto had really said that they were almost finished with the first part, not the game itself.

But, he thought, if it was divided into parts, then surely the ending would have enough resolution that they could quit there, none the wiser, and never touch Konoha again.

You know what they say about the road to hell.


	18. game 18

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. The Vurt book series belongs to Jeff Noon.

I felt like I should include a thanks in this part, seeing as I never would have known about the Vurt series if Skai hadn't introduced me to the first book, and most likely never would have written this if it hadn't been for Sam, the only other Naruto fan I knew of at the start who'd also read it. Despite all the mess this fic has been, both writing- and rewriting-wise and with half the source material being hard to find, I've had fun and gotten a few people into an obscure book series they never would have heard of otherwise.

And that's pretty cool.

Vurt Ninjas 17: The end.  
——————

-

_Yellows are knowledge feathers, with knowledge's consequences._

-

It took a lot of polite begging and some outright demands to get both Sakura and Naruto time off for the next two days; Sasuke bought the groceries while Naruto got into a yelling match with Jiraiya over the phone and Sakura sweet-talked Shizune during her Friday rounds.  
-

After the first battle of the final stretch, Sakura jerked them out of the game.

"Hey!" Naruto yelled before he could think. "Sakura, why--?"

And then he saw Sasuke, who was lying on the floor beside the couch, facing away from him. Naruto stared at his back silently.

Sakura stumbled off the couch, still in lag from the game and nearly tripping over Sasuke as she did.

". . . Hey," Naruto said roughly, as Sakura made her way down the hall, bracing herself with a hand on the wall. "Sasuke--"

"Don't," he replied, and his voice was thin and taut. "I can't take it right now."

Naruto ignored that and started to push himself up, to crawl over. The baggy sweater Sasuke was wearing didn't conceal how violently he tensed up.

"Ino?" they heard Sakura say from the bedroom. "Hi, yeah. Um. I wanted to see if Chouji was okay."

Naruto shifted and looked over his shoulder at that; but a second later he looked back to Sasuke, unwilling to take his attention off him for too long. Sasuke had tilted his head slightly, but was still facing the couch.

"No, I didn't really think anything had happened . . ." Sakura replied, starting to sound more awkward as she slid out of the Vurt and into reality. "No, no, I didn't hear anything like that. I'm sure he's still clean, yeah. Yeah. No--really, never mind, Ino-chan, it's a lon--. . . . Did I?"

Sasuke shifted slightly, pulling one of his legs up slightly and settling further onto his side. Naruto was still in the same half crouch he had been for the last minute.

"It was just a--no, Ino, I'm fi--."

Sasuke gripped the side of the couch with his good hand and started to pull himself up, still facing away. Naruto was still caught in the lag as well, and was torn between being grateful that Sasuke still trusted him enough to let him have his back and angry that he refused to _look_ at him after what he--

--no, not him. The Vurt Sasuke. The thirteen-year-old Sasuke who was completely (not really, but he'd already lied to them, why stop at himself?) different from the man in front of him.

"Ino, I don't want to fight with you about this, okay?" Sakura's voice was higher pitched now, though she was struggling to bring it back down. Naruto finally made himself look away from Sasuke and over at the hallway. "_Please_."

". . . Okay," Sakura said quietly, a few moments later. "Yeah. Me too." Another pause, and then, "I will, I promise. Bye."

The phone clicked when she shut it.

Sasuke was leaning against the front of the couch now, half facing him, which was a small battle won, Naruto supposed. He kept the man in his peripheral vision when Sakura wandered back into the living room, still holding her cell phone in one hand.

None of them spoke for a little while.

When Naruto noticed that Sasuke and Sakura were refusing to look at each other, he shifted uncomfortably, and then shifted again before rolling his shoulders exaggeratedly.

"Uh," he said, after another moment of silence. ". . . Guess we should eat, while we're out."

"Yeah," Sakura replied. "That--sounds good."

Sasuke grunted.

—

They played the rest of the final stretch straight through. Sakura didn't have a reason to jerk back out again and check on Shikamaru since he'd survived (and since she didn't think she could handle another conversation with Ino just then), and Naruto had only known Kiba from when he'd been a child--they hadn't seen each other since before they were teenagers, and he didn't know how to get a hold of him at this point, anyway . . . and he cared more about Sasuke.

Sasuke almost jerked them out at the start of his character's flashback, half-sickened at the thought of seeing his parents resurrected like that and half-terrified from the realization that this was what he had been playing for and he had no idea what it was going to be but he knew it was going to be **bad**.

It was close enough that Naruto and Sakura (who had been stuck in the usual omnipresent mode almost as long as Sasuke had) could almost feel the tendrils of a haunting curling around their consciousnesses; but then Sasuke choked himself with the masochism that Itachi had carefully cultivated in him, told himself that if he didn't finish it now he'd be driven back to the game anyway another day, and threw himself into it.

Naruto almost jerked them out when he realized he was going to lose the fight, but he knew that if he knew it Sasuke would too, and that would defeat the purpose of playing to the end of the first part. He'd probably be willing to keep it from Sakura, but then he might eventually try to play it himself to get to the end, and . . . Naruto couldn't take the thought of that. If Orochimaru wanted to take Sasuke through the Vurt, that would be the perfect opportunity.

That thought drove Naruto into a haunting. But it hadn't affected Sasuke or Sakura, so he went through the last scenes of Konoha with them, watching everything from a nauseous, detached state.

In the very last moments, while he watched though his character's eyes as it clenched its hand into a fist, he thought he heard:

_I should thank you for taking him far enough to have a taste of how I could change him_.

Naruto wrenched out of Konoha then, so harshly that he was left coughing and immediately developed a crushing headache; but the first part was over, anyway. Sasuke had left him and he'd walked away from Sakura.

Naruto forced himself to open his eyes through the sharp throbbing in his temples, and saw the two of them in front of him.

Sakura was lying on her back on the couch, one arm dangling over the edge. She'd squeezed her eyes shut from the residual pain of Naruto's crash. She'd bitten through her lip, too; but the blood on it was dried. A few inches from where her hand hung, Sasuke was sitting against the edge of the couch. He was hunched in on himself, his head tucked between his knees and his arms braced over them, protecting the back of his neck.

Sakura seemed to come fully back into reality a few seconds later, while Naruto was still convincing himself that they were there and he wasn't dreaming it. Her arm jerked up suddenly, reaching out for Sasuke; but she caught herself at the last moment, and it hovered an inch from his right shoulder.

Naruto watched her bite her lip again, then grimace and let it go, before saying hesitantly: ". . . Sasuke-kun?"

Sasuke shuddered.

Then he mumbled something under his breath about knowledge feathers that neither of them could overhear; and then he laughed--a high, desperate noise that made Naruto's hackles rise.

Sasuke broke the sound off with a choked sob a second later, and curled in tighter on himself.

"Sasuke?" Sakura hesitated another moment, reaching out that last inch; but at the same moment as her fingertips brushed his shoulder, Sasuke pushed himself forward. He wound up collapsing on his forearms more than anything, making a pained noise as he did; Naruto vaguely wondered if the damage to his arm had carried over. He didn't feel any lingering pain in his chest or arms (or maybe they _were_ there, he just couldn't feel them over the headache), but Sakura was holding her neck awkwardly.

Sasuke almost immediately pushed himself off of his forearms with another choked noise, though (which meant nothing--why hadn't he paid more attention to that self-harming streak before?), shoving himself up onto his hands and knees and crawling over to Naruto.

Underneath the sharp throbbing of the headache, Naruto suddenly remembered the even sharper pain of Sasuke ripping through his chest and lungs and breaking five ribs with the jutsu their own teacher taught him, and he couldn't help tensing up when Sasuke pressed his head against his chest, right over where the hole had been.

Sasuke's breath was strained, coming through his teeth in short bursts, and two seconds passed before he pressed the side of his face harder against Naruto's chest; like he'd been too afraid of what he might feel to really touch it before.

Naruto looked over the other man's head at Sakura, who'd rolled over on the couch so that she was on her side now, and saw that she'd started crying silently at some point.

Sakura slid off the couch after he'd stared at her for a little longer, landing awkwardly on the carpet, and crawled over to the two of them as well. She pressed up against his arm, on the side that Sasuke was facing but still hesitating to touch him.

Sasuke had tensed up when Sakura came into view, enough so that Naruto wished she'd leaned against his back instead so that he could keep an arm between the two of them. But before he could try to maneuver his arm enough to work it free without displacing her, Sasuke reached out and grabbed the collar of her shirt.

Sakura made a startled noise, which turned higher and more confused when Sasuke pressed his mouth against hers.

He let go a moment later, and then turned and kissed Naruto as well, hard enough that he could feel Sasuke's teeth behind his lips; and that was the point where there was too much weight against his chest and his head hurt too damn much to keep trying to stay upright. So Naruto let himself fall backwards even as he realized that he was just going to crack his head against the floor and hurt it even further.

He kept a tight hold on Sasuke and Sakura as he did so, though. They landed in a heap with little involuntary, displeased noises, Sasuke mostly on top of him and Sakura pinning his arm at an awkward angle; but Naruto refused to let go of his hip and her shoulder.

He tightened his grip slightly when Sasuke squirmed, but the other man just reached out and cupped a hand around the back of Sakura's head, pulling her closer and tucking her head underneath his chin. He was still pressing the side of his face against Naruto's chest.

Far in the back of his mind, Naruto wryly regretted that such a great fantasy moment was being wrecked by the overriding fear that if he stopped touching either of them for too long, they would disappear--Sakura to the friends and life she'd had before, the one that she'd been balancing easily before he came into it, and Sasuke. . . .

. . . Sasuke to the man who could maybe do the one thing Naruto never could: get him out of the body he hated and into one that would let him live like a normal person.

But it was still trading one master for another--Itachi for Orochimaru, an abusive brother for god-knows-what the Game Cat was.

Naruto prayed to anyone he thought might listen, including Sakura and Sasuke himself, that Sasuke knew that too.

A moment later, Sakura made a small whimpering noise, and Sasuke hissed under his breath. Naruto forced himself to loosen his grip _slightly_, even though the fear was still there and so cloying that he was sure they must have smelled it too, even with their weaker noses.

The weight of Sasuke's head was still bringing up the lingering memory of charred meat and broken bones, and his elbow was starting to tingle weirdly where it was caught underneath Sakura's waist, and the headache felt like it was settling in for the long haul; but Naruto didn't want to move from his spot, not ever for the rest of his life.

—

What eventually drove Sakura to get up was the fact that, over Sasuke's shoulder, she could see the creamed feather with its traces of yellow along the edge. There were other things, to be sure--she was hungry, her arm had fallen asleep, she needed to use the restroom, and the feel of Sasuke's hand on the back of her head still made her think of a whisper and the way a concrete bridge had scraped her knees as she fell, even if that was receding with the minutes . . . but mostly it was the feather. Even when she closed her eyes, she knew it was there.

Sasuke rolled away, to the side, as soon as she pushed herself up onto her feet, leaving Naruto to mumble something about the cold. He fell quiet again soon, though, massaging his shoulder and arm where she had been lying on them. Sasuke didn't say anything.  
-

They ate sandwiches while sitting on the kitchen floor. It had been Sakura's idea to make and refrigerate them before returning back to Konoha the last time, which was the only reason they managed to eat at all; and they stayed on the floor because no one wanted to take the seat Itachi had been in. The fourth chair was still pulled up against the wall, tilting back to the right slightly where its leg was broken.

Naruto hadn't stopped touching either of them since the game had ended (had it ended? was that really . . . but Naruto had said . . . unless Kabuto had lied to him . . .), even it if was only his foot pressed against their shins as they ate; and his expression when he looked at Sasuke had slowly been shifting as the minutes passed.

Sasuke was pretending not to notice. Sakura knew their habits well enough by now, and the odd injection of normality into the incredibly fucked up situation they'd been living in for the last couple of weeks was made it hard to keep eating.

Sakura told herself that at least half of the reason was probably because the sandwich was chewy in that gross way that only refrigerated bread was capable of. She managed to get down one last bite, and then dropped the remainder onto the paper towel she'd been holding under her chin to keep the crumbs off the floor and her skirt.

"I'm going to take a shower," she said, pulling her shin away from Naruto's foot and standing up. His gaze shifted to her. "I feel disgusting."

She could _see_ Naruto's mind working as he opened his mouth to say they'd come with her, then realized that there wasn't enough room for three people in there, then (probably) remembered that Sasuke and Sakura hadn't--**still** didn't, **still**, fuck the game she wasn't gonna . . .--been prone to get naked together before, then ran through a couple ideas to try and get around all those tiny details and finally gave up. He reached over and ran his knuckles along her calf slightly, instead. ". . . Don't take too long."

"Mm," she replied in an agreeing tone, because she wasn't sure what else to say anymore.

She left the sandwich on the table as she passed, picking her way over their outstretched legs rather than circling around and crossing by the chair Itachi had been in.  
-

Sakura realized that she should probably call Jiraiya only after she'd folded her clothes on the counter. She had another day off (give or take; it was dark now, she should find out just what the time was), but Naruto was supposed to show up for work either tomorrow or in a few hours, and he wouldn't think to call.

Sasuke and Naruto were gone when she left the bathroom, though the bedroom door wasn't closed all the way. Sakura heard a crash from inside while she was fishing her cell phone out of her purse; she blew her bangs away from her face when it was followed by a second one and the creak of the mattress, but that was more from reflex than anything else.

She couldn't bring herself to call Jiraiya's office while naked, so she pulled her towel off the rack and tucked it around herself quickly as she dialed.

She'd expected the answering machine, so she was startled when the phone was picked up instead. "What?"

"Um." The speech that she'd been planning to give the machine failed her. "Hello?"

"Sakura?"

She noted in the back of her mind that he'd dropped the 'Ms.', but that was probably fair trade for telling him to go to hell and making such a scene in Shizune's office. "Yes. Um. Naruto--won't be coming in tomorrow."

"Is he dead?"

Sakura sucked in a breath before she could help herself; on the other end of the phone, she heard the faint noise of Jiraiya shifting, as if he was taking note of something. "No!"

Another shift. "--I mean," Sakura lapsed, trying to salvage the situation before . . . she wasn't sure. It wasn't like he was still _friends_ with Orochimaru, ri--

--He'd told Naruto to forget about Sasuke. Fuck him. "It would be a bad idea," she continued, and was glad to hear that her voice had fallen back into the polite but unarguable tone she usually used on difficult patients. "I'm sorry if it'll have a negative impact on the day's work, but I really think it'll be better if he doesn't see you for another day."

"You're a psychiatrist now, miss?" Jiraiya asked, but before she could associate any deeper meanings with the comment or get offended, he continued. "Fine--but it's coming out of his pay."

". . . I'll tell him," Sakura replied. "Thank you."

"Evening," he said by way of conclusion, before hanging up.

Sakura looked at her phone's time as she was returning it to her purse, and saw that it was indeed only eight twenty-seven at night--strange that he had still been in the workshop that late, but Naruto had pulled later hours at times. It wasn't that suspicious.

She hoped it wasn't that suspicious. She really didn't like the idea of living in a world where she started viewing everyone with suspicion, and probably only trusted Ino and her teammat--lovers--God, _them_, what_ever_.

_I hope I never meet Kakashi-sensei somewhere_, Sakura thought as she hung the towel back on the rack and turned on the shower. _I'd probably throw myself on him, crying because I'd finally found another adult I could trust. Geh._

—

Jiraiya kept his hand on the receiver of the phone for a few moments after he'd hung up, and then slowly let it drift back onto his desk as he made a few notes on the back of an envelope--the only paper that had been in reach when Sakura had called.

He capped the pen when he was done, and tapped it against the desk as he stared at the shorthand that would hopefully be legible to no one but himself; and then he dropped it as well.

Jiraiya cradled his head in his hands and wondered if he should get Tsunade involved, or just take it on his own. Naruto was his employee, his stray, and she wouldn't get mixed up in problems that she thought were his without kicking and screaming the whole way at this point; but Yashagoro had always respected her marginally more than him. The few blacks that Tsunade had bothered to design were still highly prized among connoisseurs, even decades later. Jiraiya was well aware that even his best work in pinks were treated as little more than mass consumption trash.

But at least his pinks had never killed anyone.

He pushed away from the desk with an explosive exhalation of breath, then stood up and ripped the section of the envelope with writing on it free before folding it up and tucking it into the inner pocket of his vest.

The warehouse had already been closed down for a couple hours; all he had to do was shut off the main lighting and check that the dreamsnakes were safely caged and fed before leaving.

—

Sakura had just finished rinsing the shampoo out of her hair when she heard the bedroom door bang into the wall.

_We just **cleaned** the carpet_, she thought irritably, pushing her hair away from her face and tilting her head back into the water's spray.

A moment later, though, the bathroom door was shoved open as well.

Sakura looked over in surprise, then jumped and half-choked on the water when Naruto yanked the curtain back. "What--?"

Naruto rather impressively--considering that she was soaking wet--managed to lift her up and sling her halfway over his shoulder. Sakura shrieked, and then yelped when her foot banged into the side of the wall as he turned back towards the door.

Naruto didn't apologize for that. He didn't say anything at all; and Sakura started to feel nervous in a way that made her throat close up and her tongue feel numb.

"Put me down!" she snapped, hitting him in the shoulder; and when that didn't work, Sakura attempted to push away, scrabbling to get a good enough foothold to break free. "I mean it!"

Naruto hissed when her foot slid along his inner thigh, and gripped her waist harder. "Don't do that," he said tightly. "I can't--"

Sakura's lips pulled back from her teeth slightly as they passed through the bedroom doorway, and then she deliberately did it again.

Naruto growled low in his chest, and suddenly let her drop. She landed unsteadily on her feet, and had just a moment to notice Sasuke sprawled across the bed before Naruto grabbed her arms and shoved her against the wall.

Sakura shrieked again, much higher this time, and then made a noise that she didn't even recognize when he bit the skin between her shoulder and throat.

"I'm not leaving again," he snarled, before letting go of her arms and gripping her thighs instead. "I'm _not!_"

Sakura made a pained noise when he pushed her up--her back scraped against the cheap whitewashed plaster of the wall, and for a second she couldn't get her footing. She managed to find a balance on the balls of her feet, but then Naruto jerked her right thigh up higher and out, and she lost it again.

Sakura shoved him hard in the chest, and then sucked in a breath when the heel of her right foot slammed into the edge of the door frame. Naruto's grip on her thighs tightened until it hurt.

"Stop it!" Sakura shoved him again, squeezing her eyes shut and not caring that she'd just clipped her heel again. "Naruto!!"

Naruto growled again, a noise that turned into a higher snarl when he suddenly wrenched back.

Sakura was dragged partly away from the wall before he let go of her; when she landed hard on the floor, her shoulders banged against it and her head didn't fare much better. She automatically pulled her legs up against her chest before she opened her eyes.

That was when she saw that Naruto hadn't pushed himself away--Sasuke had pulled him. He managed to drag the other man back until he stumbled up against the bed, and then he crashed to the floor as well, still keeping a tight grip on Naruto.

Sasuke clenched his jaw hard when he hit the carpet, trying to smother a pained noise.

"The knot'll hurt her in that position," he said tensely after a moment, and then, "Get your teeth out of my arm, dead last."

Naruto shuddered at that, and Sakura didn't want to know which sentence had brought him back. He yanked away from Sasuke's arm, leaving blood behind. Sakura crossed her ankles and pressed a little farther up against the wall when he spat more blood out.

"Shit, Sasuke, I--Sakura!" He wrenched around to stare at her, making Sakura freeze up.

From the look on his face, that small motion had hurt as much as if she'd kicked him right in the chest. Naruto suddenly tried to scramble backwards; but since there was nowhere back to go, he only wound up smashing Sasuke against the bed frame.

Sasuke's entire body had tensed up at this point. If Sakura hadn't been afraid to look away from Naruto, she would have tried to figure out how bad the damage was.

"I'm sorry, Sakura, Sakura-chan, I'm so sorry, shit, I didn't--I'm sorry, Sakura, don't hate me, please." Naruto tried to pull back again, shaking his head; Sasuke shifted to the side. "I'm so sorry, Sakura-chan, I'm sorry."

She made herself glance at Sasuke, finally; and he was looking straight at her.

_Both_, Sasuke mouthed when he saw he finally had her attention.

Like even the weakest shadowgirl, Sasuke could sense emotions--the real Naruto was tangled up with the Vurt, and both of them were completely flipping out.

Sakura thought to herself that it wasn't fair that she'd almost been--been--and now she had to **comfort **him?--but then she shoved that thought down hard.

_I know the real Naruto_, she said back to that voice. _We've all--we've all been through shit. He would never hurt me in reality._

_Reality's changed_, the other part of her replied before she could stop it, and Sakura swallowed. _Reality's never going to be the same aga--_

_Shut up!_

Sakura rocked forward, nearly falling to the side as she did.

"You're bleeding," Naruto said, still in that freaked-out tone, "oh shit, Sakura, I'm really, really sorry."

When she looked down, she saw that he was right--her heel was bleeding from where she'd busted it against the door frame.

"It's--okay," Sakura replied, crawling over slowly. Sasuke wrapped an arm around Naruto's chest, half in an effort to keep the other man from trying to futilely back away any more and half to reassure her. "It's not that bad."

"I'm sorry," Naruto said.

Sakura stopped in front of him. "Okay." She bit her lip, then caught herself and stopped, and leaned her head against his shoulder. "Okay."

Naruto lifted a hand, and Sakura managed not to flinch or even tense up much; but even so it hovered several inches away, afraid to touch her.

He let it drop a moment later.

"Sorry, Sakura," Naruto whispered almost inaudibly.

"Okay," she said again, keeping her forehead resting on his shoulder, but not closing her eyes. At the edge of her vision, she could see Sasuke shift again.

She wasn't sure how much time passed after that, with the three of them not speaking and just breathing, but Sasuke must have eventually decided that they'd calmed down, because he finally pulled his arm away from Naruto's chest.

"I need to bandage this," he said, voice at its normal tone but still startlingly loud after the quiet. "Sakura, come help me. You need to dry off."

". . . Yeah," she mumbled.  
-

Sasuke cut off the shower while Sakura dried off quickly and wrenched on her nightgown. She'd been naked in front of Sasuke once before, but this time . . . it was even weirder now.

She heard him running the tap and cleaning up while she was turned away, so Sakura tried to tug her panties on without rucking her gown up too much, and then--since the water was still going--went to wash her foot off awkwardly at the shower. By the time she'd finished bandaging it, Sasuke was done as well and was rinsing the washcloth out at the sink.

He'd noticed her discomfort. "Do you want me to get dressed first?" he asked seriously, squeezing the cloth out with his good hand.

"No," she replied, a doctor first, and knowing that she'd calm down faster with work to do, "that has to be disinfected. Let me get the kit. . . ."

Sasuke let her wash off the bite (not as deep as she'd first thought, but still bad), apply a liberal amount of antibiotics and wrap it up with minimal hissing or swearing. Sakura knew that was a bad sign--the more pain he tended to be in, the less he griped about it.

She checked the bruising on his hand as well when she was done. "I think your arm's cursed," she commented lamely, even though the swelling had gone down a lot.

Sasuke made a noise in the back of his throat. Sakura let go of his hand, and he let it drop at his side, eying the bandage that was already starting to turn red.

"Are you . . . okay?" she asked, not really sure how to broach the question. He wasn't a normal patient, after all. And he was still naked, too, which just added to the awkwardness.

"Yeah," he replied shortly, before looking over at her. "What about you?"

Sakura nodded and tried to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear, but stopped when she realized how tangled it was. She hadn't gotten to conditioner when . . . it wasn't worth trying to comb it tonight. "Yeah."

Sasuke gave her a long look, and then glanced down at the floor. "He wasn't angry," he told her, quietly so that it wouldn't be heard in the other room. "He was scared--really scared, of losing you. He just . . . showed it wrong."

Sakura bit the inside of her lip, looking at her foot.

". . . Losing us," she corrected, tucking her arms into her elbows. ". . . But . . . that's not like he's ever been before. I _told_ you, that . . . you know, that time, he's always been careful. . . ."

Sasuke closed his eyes, and then rubbed his temple with a thumb; and Sakura realized suddenly that there was something he hadn't told her.

"What?" she asked.

". . . He's affected by both of his vurt characters." Sasuke's voice was low, almost inaudible. "The Naruto and the fox one."

Sakura sucked her bottom lip into her teeth, and then pressed her back against the wall and wrapped her arms around herself.

"It's never been a problem for him before," Sasuke continued. "Tonight was just weird." He paused, and then added, "I'll warn you if it happens again."

". . . Thank you," Sakura whispered.

Sasuke didn't reply; and after several seconds, she turned away. "You can get dressed now."

He snorted humorlessly under his breath, but turned towards the door.  
-

When they got back to the bedroom, they found that Naruto was curled up on the very edge of the bed, where Sasuke normally slept, with his face buried in the pillow. The muscles in his back tensed when they came in, but he didn't look up.

—

Sasuke slept in the middle of the bed for the first time since they'd begun sharing it, partly to give Sakura some extra space between her and Naruto and partly because both of them wanted to be sure they would know it if he went anywhere.

Sakura was kind of surprised that he wasn't starting to rebel against this smothering; it wasn't like him at all. She wasn't sure if she wanted to acknowledge the other reason he was sleeping in the middle enough to thank him, though.

What neither of them had taken into account was the fact that Sasuke had spent almost fifteen years living in a house with a man who, when it really got down to it, terrified him. Therefore, he was much closer to being a ninja than either of them.

Sakura only woke up several minutes after Sasuke had left the bed, when the edge of the blanket had been pulled lower long enough that her shoulder had grown cold.

Her first instinct was to sit up abruptly and shake Naruto awake; but after her eyes adjusted, she could see light through the cracks along the door.

Sakura pressed her fingertips to her mouth, staring at the door, and then finally began the slow task of shifting off the bed without waking Naruto.  
-

Sasuke was on the couch, half-lying in a zigzag on his side and doing something with the feather translator device. He pulled his legs in closer when she moved to sit on it as well, but grimaced at the movement. Sakura wedged herself into as small a space as possible at the other end; and Sasuke almost immediately stretched his legs out again.

He'd redressed the bandage on his arm; there was only a faint pinkish stain along it.

". . . How's your heel?" he asked, after they'd been sitting in silence for a while.

"Oh," Sakura said, looking down and lifting it slightly out of reflex. "It's fine. It wasn't that bad a cut."

"Sorry," Sasuke said, voice even quieter now. He was still staring at the FTD, but he wasn't typing or moving through the screens. "I didn't move fast enough."

"It's--" Despite what she wanted, she had to swallow before continuing. "It's okay."

Sasuke looked over at her.

Sakura smiled wanly at him, and then shook her head and looked at the hallway. ". . . I'm still a little . . . but. I'll deal with it. I don't want to leave."

Sasuke looked at her for a little longer, then glanced back down at the FTD, and then closed his eyes and nodded once. ". . . Yeah."

Sakura looked around the room idly, before her purse caught her attention. "--Hey, what time is it?"

Sasuke frowned slightly. ". . . Probably around one, by the traffic," he replied, tilting his head slightly towards the window without moving his body much. Sakura hoped he really was okay and not just putting on a show. "Why?"

"Ino should be done with her sets. . . ." Sakura pushed away from the couch, padding over to the coat rack and her cell phone.

She took the phone into the bathroom to talk, to avoid disturbing Sasuke--she'd caught sight of the FTD's screen while sitting, and it had seemed to be the feather than had contained all the files on Orochimaru. Sasuke had been adding what his brother must have told him about Gaara when he was had come over.

Ino was apparently working late, because the phone rang several times before she picked up (and she was, unfortunately, one of those people who had no problem with talking on the phone while driving); and when she did, the noise of the strip club's upstairs room was audible in the background. "Yes?"

"Hi," Sakura said.

"Do you need me to come over?" was Ino's immediate reaction. "I can skip this last set."

"--Wow, it's really been bad, hasn't it?" Sakura said, reflecting.

"Yeah," Ino replied, managing to drawl and lift the end of the word sarcastically at the same time. She shifted the phone. "So?"

Sakura heard the bedroom door open, and looked over even though she'd closed the bathroom one. The floor creaked slightly as Naruto headed into the living room.

". . . No," she said, softly. She started to run a hand through her bangs, but then winced when she was reminded about the tangles. "I'm okay."

"Sakura, it's one in the morning," Ino replied. "'Okay' people don't need to call now. Are you sure you don't want me to come over or get you or anything?"

"No," she answered a little more firmly, shaking her head. "I--I don't think I could stand to see you yet. I just . . . wanted to hear your voice."

The background noise died down some; Ino must have moved to a quieter corner. When she spoke, her voice was lower. "What happened?"

". . . We played the rest of Konoha," Sakura answered, making a wry face when she heard Ino suck in a breath. "Pretty much straight through, to get it over with. I'm still kind of. . . ."

"How'd it end?" Ino asked, sounding worried.

Sakura chewed on her lip. "It. . . ."

She thought of Sasuke on the bridge, and the pain in her neck, and the desperation in his voice when he'd screamed at Naruto, and the way he'd walked away from them and from Itachi and straight to Orochimaru and then thought of that burning, choking red chakra and Naruto's hands on her thighs.

When Ino said her name again, Sakura realized that her breathing had sped up.

"I can't," she said, leaning forward and resting her forehead on her knees. "I can't right now, Ino. It was bad. I'll tell you later, okay?"

"Okay," Ino replied, soothingly. "Sure, whenever you're ready, Sakura. Just call me."

Sakura closed her eyes, and then pressed a fist against her mouth for several seconds.

When she pulled it away again, she said, "Make sure Shikamaru passes bar soon, okay?"

"I'm trying, believe me," Ino drawled. "Why?"

". . . You may need it," was all Sakura could bring herself to say. The three of _them_ hadn't even figured out what they were going to do yet, aside from Naruto's not entirely joking suggestion that they bribe a Vaz trucker and run away to another city; she didn't know what she could tell Ino. "Sasuke's brother--he's real."

"What?"

Sakura pressed the fist against her knee. "He's just some corporate businessman, but there is a gang called the Akatsuki. Sasuke said he's trying to get away from them, so he probably can't do much on his own . . . you've never told anyone about Sasuke, right?"

". . . No," Ino said, and her voice was sliding towards a nervous tone. "Nobody."

"Then you should be okay," Sakura said firmly. "Like I said, I don't think--I don't think he can reach that far."

". . . You're not telling me something," Ino replied, after a moment.

Sakura smiled thinly, and wished she could have pulled something past Ino just once. ". . . Yeah. I'll--tell you about it with all the rest. Will tomorrow afternoon be okay?"

"Yeah," Ino said.

". . . I'm sorry," Sakura added, quietly, looking down at the bathmat. "I didn't mean to get you caught up in this."

"Why are _you_ apologizing?" Ino retorted. "**Naruto's** the one who bought that damn game in the first place! When I see him again I'm gonna kick his _ass_."

Sakura laughed slightly.

In the background, someone called Ino's name. She yelled something back, covering the mouthpiece, and then lifted her hand away again. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah," Sakura replied. "I will be."

She could picture the face Ino was making at that, so she went on before the other woman could say anything. "Be careful on your way home, okay?"

"Sakura," Ino replied, in that mock haughty tone she knew well, along with its accompanying smirk, "I'm a stripper. I carry an arsenal in my purse any old day."

Sakura's smile was finally genuine. "Okay."

"I'll call you tomorrow."

"Okay."

Ino lingered on the line for a few more moments, despite that; but she finally hung up first. Sakura closed her phone and looked over at the door again.  
-

When she finally brought herself to open it, she heard Sasuke say "--brother's a kabuki actor in Kyoto."

"Seriously?" Naruto replied. "Why were he and Temari here, then?"

"Same reason as everything else," Sasuke replied with admittedly well-justified cynicism.

Naruto bit his lip when Sakura came into sight, and shifted awkwardly. She noticed that Sasuke was sitting up straight now, the lines of his face tense.

Naruto started to push away from the couch as she got closer, but Sakura shook her head at him. She sat down in the free space a moment later, pulling her legs up onto the couch and leaning back against his side. She was still clutching the phone in her hand, and she carefully placed one foot so that her toes were just touching Sasuke's thigh.

"Was there proof of that?" she asked, referring to his last statement before she walked into room.

Sasuke shook his head slightly. He'd noticed her foot, but didn't say anything about it. "Conjecture," he replied. "If there's proof, it's above his level."

Sakura let out a relieved breath. Behind her, she heard Naruto mumble, "Good to know something is," but his tone made it clear that he was thinking about the game, not earlier.

". . . What should we do?" she asked a moment later, when Naruto had shifted slightly behind her.

"What did Ino say?" Sasuke asked.

Sakura pulled her other leg up closer to her chest, and then wrapped her arms around her knee. "I . . . don't think she really gets it yet, but. That's my fault. I asked her to see me tomorrow, that I'd tell her about it all then. . . ."

She pulled the leg a little closer. Sasuke looked back down at the feather translator, and then moved to save the file.

"Maybe we should move to the edge of the city," Naruto suggested.

Sasuke looked over at him; Sakura tilted her head back slightly, but then became uncomfortably aware of how it bared her throat and tilted it to the side instead.

"The farther from the center, the farther from control, right?" he said. "He'd have a harder time getting us there."

"But . . . the edges. . . ." Sakura bit her lip.

"It's not that far from the workshop," Naruto continued, shifting again. Sakura scooted forward slightly so that he could arrange his arm more comfortably. "And Shizune's place isn't that far from there! So it's not, you know, really that much of a change. . . ."

"Uh-huh."

Sakura glanced at Sasuke, who was still staring down at the FTD and hadn't spoken yet.

It took a lot of effort to say her next words. ". . . Maybe if we split up for a little while. . . ."

Naruto jerked around, half-pulling himself up off the couch; Sakura jumped. "What?!"

"Not--no, Naruto, not like--I don't want to leave either," she replied abruptly, finally saying what she'd tried to avoid while talking to Ino. "I don't. I _don't_. But. Just for a little while, until things are better."

"Things don't just get better," Naruto said, and she could feel how he'd tensed even though he was keeping his voice gentle. "You have to make them."

"Sometimes you make them by pulling away for a little while when they're too dangerous," she replied softly.

She heard the noise of nails scraping across cloth as Naruto clenched a fist around the arm of the couch.

"I've been saving part of my pay," Sasuke finally said. "It's not much; I had to put most of it into the account to avoid suspicion. But it should be enough to pay for food and electricity for a while."

Naruto's chin brushed her hair as he turned to look at the other man.

"It won't cover rent for long, even on the edge," Sasuke added, just in case they hadn't got it.

Sakura could feel the corners of her lips quirking, into a little, odd smile. She glanced down at the couch rather than risking letting Sasuke see her like that. ". . . I've got a lot saved up," she added. "I'll set up a new account, but it should hold us for a few months."

"You need that money for med school," he replied.

"That's--"

"I can get work anywhere in the pornovurt industry," Naruto interrupted. "Even if the old bastard fires me without a reference, I know more than enough to get a better paying job somewhere else." He leaned back into the couch. "We can cover money."

Sakura looked over at the window, over the back of the couch. ". . . Ms. Shizune probably won't keep me much longer, she's really nervous . . . but I can get a different job. Clerk work or something. Or a better scholarship this time."

Naruto glanced over her head at Sasuke, who was still saving files on the FTD. "We'll be okay."

His tone allowed reality to brook no argument. Sakura smiled faintly.

"I think . . . they'll be okay," she said, very quietly. "If they're even a little like us, I think--"

"I hope he fails," Sasuke said flatly.

Both Naruto and Sakura looked at him.

"Hey," Naruto said, after a few moments, "he was just a kid. After all that Itachi--"

"I--" Sasuke interrupted again. "I woke up because I had a--I dreamed--. . . ."

He rested his hands flat on the keyboard of the feather translator, but then suddenly clenched his left one into a fist.

"I could feel my hand through your chest," Sasuke said through his teeth, spitting the words out. "I hope he fails and _dies_."

Sakura pressed the sole of her foot against his thigh.

"I don't," she replied. "The three of them will be okay in the end, even if it's hard."

"Yeah, because that--" Sasuke caught himself on the sarcasm fairly soon this time, however, and exhaled before unclenching his jaw slightly. "They don't have a great track record so far."

"That's how _I_ think the story ends, and that's what I'm sticking with," she retorted.

Several more minutes passed, as they sat on the couch; and it was Sasuke who at last broached the subject.

"That wasn't the end, was it?" he said, finally looking up and over her shoulder at Naruto.

Naruto let his head fall back against the top of the couch, staring up at the ceiling.

He closed his eyes before confessing. "Kabuto said it was the end of the first part."

"Bastard," Sakura muttered, thinking of the look on Kabuto's face when he'd kicked Naruto in the ribs during the sannins' fight. "I hope his life at the Sound _sucks_."

Sasuke actually snerked once, under his breath; and Sakura thought of way he'd made Kabuto get a nervous look in the last moments they'd seen him.

_Kick his ass_, she thought to his Vurt version.

She jumped when Sasuke snapped the FTD shut, and heard Naruto swallow.

"The hell with this," Sasuke said, standing up gingerly and dropping the FTD onto the couch where he'd been. "I'm going back to sleep."

Naruto lifted his head; Sasuke glanced at him, and then looked down the hall toward the bedroom.

". . . Yeah," Sakura agreed, swinging her legs over the edge of the couch. "It's too late to try and deal with this. We'll think better in the morning."

Naruto started to push himself off the couch once she was standing. Sakura hesitated for a moment, and then turned around and offered him a hand.

Naruto glanced at it before looking up at her face, expression sliding from confusion to worry. She raised an eyebrow.

When Naruto took her hand and stood up, Sakura looked over at Sasuke, who was still waiting on the two of them. "Do you want me to re-bandage your arm?"

He shook his head briefly. "It'll last to morning."

She nodded once. "Okay."

Sasuke turned and headed back to the bedroom. Naruto was moving slower, so they wound up lingering a few steps behind him.

". . . I'm sorry," Naruto said to her, after they'd passed the bathroom.

Sakura squeezed his hand and didn't reply.  
-

They were all too wired to fall asleep quickly, even though they _were_ all tired. Several minutes passed before Naruto said, "Hey."

"Mph?" was Sakura's reply as she pulled the blanket down slightly. Sasuke, still sleeping in the middle, just grunted.

"I heard about this one guy, Hobart's Law gave him some Vurt creature that became his girlfriend or something," Naruto continued. "And he didn't want to risk her being taken back without him, so they braided their hair together until there was no way to separate it, so that it'd have to take them both."

"Oh, that's just an urban myth," Sakura murmured, curling up a little more under the blanket.

"Not a chance in _hell_," Sasuke replied.

—

Kabuto's apartment was a one-bedroom one, but his futon was set up in the living room, along with all the other necessities of life. He'd converted the bedroom proper into a feather workshop, the equipment of which would have made Naruto jealous--and Jiraiya's workshop was fairly cutting edge, since he had the money from the original Konohas and several other blacks to fund it in addition to the pinks' revenue. He'd set the workshop up in the bedroom half because it would give him an extra room's worth of warning if anyone ever entered, and half because the bathroom connected to the bedroom and Kabuto had considered it pragmatic to have it be by the area he spent the majority of his time in.

He was carefully hanging a black feather with yellow tints to the drying rack when Orochimaru appeared behind him.

Kabuto jumped--still not used to knowing someone who could move through the Vurt and thus not be constrained by reality--and then was glad that he'd gotten the feather attached so that it hadn't dropped while still wet with the phantasm liquid.

"Sir," he said, turning around.

"Do you have it?" Orochimaru replied, as usual eschewing even the most basic of greetings and speaking with that odd, inhuman voice that Kabuto had uncomfortably realized he was getting used to.

"Yes," he replied, moving over to a feather translator device that was sitting beside a packet of silvers on a second table. Orochimaru followed his movements with his eyes and turned his head when necessary, but his body remained still.

Kabuto saved the file he'd been working on earlier one last time from habit, then closed it and ejected the silver feather from the FTD. He turned around and brought it over to Orochimaru.

"They finished the first part in one rush just a few hours ago," he said, as the Game Cat lifted the feather from his hand with an odd motion that Kabuto could only think of as 'like calling to like.'

"I know," Orochimaru replied.

_Of course_. "I've received a buying request for the game from Itachi Uchiha," he added. "What do you want me to do?"

Orochimaru ran a fingertip up the fringe of the silver, considering for a few moments.

"Let him have it," he finally said. "If he gets that involved, Sasuke-kun will only become more desperate."

"Understood."

Orochimaru disappeared then, leaving Kabuto with the same head rush of reality and Vurt combining unnaturally that always prevented him from actually seeing how the Game Cat managed it.

Once he was gone, Kabuto breathed out evenly. Then he went to shut down the FTD before returning to work on the next feather.


End file.
